


if i was dying on my knees (you would be the one to rescue me)

by ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A Tony Stark raises Sharon Carter fic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Sharon Carter (Marvel), Break Up, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Coma, Comatose Peggy Carter, Flashbacks, Focus is really more on platonic relationships, Gen, I really feel sorry for him in this, Major Canon Divergence happens in Chapter 6, Non-Canonical Character Death, Orphan Sharon Carter, POV Sharon Carter (Marvel), POV Steve Rogers, POV Tony Stark, Past canonical death that happens offscreen and is referenced many times, Relationship Issues, Sharon Carter Tries Her Best, Steve Rogers Tries His Best, Tagging 'gen' because the romantic relationships are background, Tony Stark Tries His Best, Tony Stark being responsible, Tony Stark is Good With Kids, Tony Stark is not Iron Man, Unhappy Ending, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, poor steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding/pseuds/ElvisHasLeftTheBuilding
Summary: December 16, 1991As far as family dinners go, especially during Christmas time, today isn’t the worst. In fact, it’s unusually pleasurable, and even downright memorable, edging into the realm of weirdness – if only because of the lack of insolent remarks (Tony) and open contempt (Howard). Tony feels that most of the credit can be laid squarely on the shoulders of his Godmother, Peggy Carter, and her pacifying influence on Howard Stark.Peggy’s brought along her brother Michael, his wife (a petite woman named Kate), and their infant daughter Sharon. Having known Howard for many decades and well aware of his proclivity to indulge in drink, Peggy warns him to be on his best behavior, and Howard in his usual domineering manner, warns Tony to do the same. Not that Tony needs the reminder – only a complete fool would cross Peggy Carter....Or alternatively:What if the Winter Soldier didn't only take out Howard and Maria Stark on December 16, 1991? What if, on that day, the Carters were visiting for Christmas?
Relationships: Howard Stark & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, Minor James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark - Relationship, Minor Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers - Relationship, Sharon Carter & Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter & Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Sharon Carter & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> Trying out a new style of writing here. Because of REAL LIFE, I'm no longer able to just sit down and write ten thousand words in one go. So now I'm posting shorter chapters, but more often. Let's see how it goes.
> 
> As promised, my 'Winter Soldier attacks Peggy Carter on 16 December 1991' fic, narrating the events of Captain America: Civil War given this very big change.
> 
> I'll be the first to admit that I'm not Sharon Carter's biggest fan - she's a bit too sanctimonious for me to stomach. That said, I'll also be the first to admit that in the comics, Agent 13 is tough, badass, extremely competent, a tiny bit ruthless, and never afraid to challenge Steve when she thinks he's wrong. In MCU however, she appeared for about five minutes, flirted with Cap, sucked face with him, and then disappeared from the rest of the film.
> 
> Like, what the hell?
> 
> Moving on.
> 
> Thanks to my subscribers for sticking with me, and hope you guys like it!
> 
> I don't own anything.
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome!

**_December 16, 1991_ **

_As far as family dinners go, especially during Christmas time, today isn’t the worst. In fact, it’s unusually pleasurable, and even downright memorable, edging into the realm of **weirdness** – if only because of the lack of insolent remarks (Tony) and open contempt (Howard). Tony feels that most of the credit can be laid squarely on the shoulders of his Godmother, Peggy Carter, and her pacifying influence on Howard Stark._

_Peggy’s brought along her brother Michael, his wife (a petite woman named Kate), and their infant daughter Sharon. Having known Howard for many decades and well aware of his proclivity to indulge in drink, Peggy warns him to be on his best behavior, and Howard in his usual domineering manner, warns Tony to do the same. Not that Tony needs the reminder – only a complete fool would cross Peggy Carter._

_Whatever strident threats or castigation Peggy gives Howard behind closed doors, they do the job, because by nine o’clock, his father is only mildly intoxicated instead of completely sauced. By Howard standards, that’s nothing short of a minor miracle._

_For dessert, each of them gets a slice of rose cheesecake from the fridge. Tony tops his cheesecake slice with a dollop of Nutella, then sneaks the jar to baby Sharon Carter in her highchair. Baby Sharon gets a fancy silver teaspoon, eating straight out of her Nutella jar and soon gets chocolate spread all over her face and hair and dress. For good measure, she manages to get imprint chocolate handprints all over Maria’s expensive upholstery before someone notices and stops her._

_Tony’s not a baby person, but even he can admit that Sharon Carter’s cuteness, with her tufty blonde pigtails and sparkling blue eyes and chocolate-smeared cheeks, is downright debilitating. Her hair is so blonde that individual strands look white._

_By the time dinner is over, it’s the longest time Tony and Howard have been in the same room without rowing or snapping at each other since Howard packed him off to boarding school. While Maria, Michael, and Kate loiter in the mansion’s vestibule as they gather their winter coats, Howard and Peggy huddle together on the obnoxiously stately driveway, having a whispered argument. Tony isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he can’t help but overhear a few snippets anyway. Howard’s voice is colored with defensiveness, Peggy’s with dourness. As the argument goes on and on, Peggy also starts clutching her tote bag like she’s contemplating braining Howard with it._

_“-Steve wouldn’t want-”_

_“-worry… by tomorrow-”_

_“-experiments… last time-”_

_“-lot of good-”_

_“-the wrong hands-”_

_“- **my** hands… safe-”_

_“-completely slipshod… safeguards-”_

_Howard is nursing yet another glass of scotch. Whatever it is they’re arguing about, it’s giving him the same expression that he wears whenever he’s feeling particularly disappointed in Tony’s life choices and Tony in general. Although Peggy Carter is Howard’s contemporary, somehow, standing side-by-side, she still seems years younger than him. Peggy’s dark hair is curled to perfection, streaked with grey that makes her seem worldly and elegant, as if drawn from a brush. Her bloodred lipstick is immaculate and her complexion flushed from drink, but her dark eyes are shrewd and scrutinizing, with a receptive quality to them. Peggy Carter is the kind of woman, who, even at seventy years of age, burns brighter than everyone else around her._

_Both of them clam up instantly when they hear the clapping of Kate’s sandals against the gravel of the driveway, heralding the arrival of Tony’s mother and the rest of the Carters. Michael juggles the duffel bag with Sharon’s baby things and a wrapped biscuit tin – sugar cookies and gingerbread biscuits courtesy of Jarvis, because Howard has never stepped foot in the kitchen in his life and probably never will, while Maria’s only edible dish is baked ziti._

_Tony is, once again, left to entertain baby Sharon while the grownups say goodbye. Someone (probably his mother) has crowned her with a string of popcorn garland and pinned red felt poinsettias to her tiny blonde pigtails. To stop Sharon from eating her crown, he’s holding her up in front of the living room sash windows, amusing her by breathing over the glass and then letting her trail her tiny baby fingers in the condensation, shrieking with hilarity all the while._

_“You’re very easily pleased, aren’t you?” Tony says glibly, as Sharon giggles again. She cheekily swings her little feet, clad in pink and glittery jelly sandals, back and forth._

_She babbles nonsensically at him in reply, seeming to find the bumpy surface of the pebble-dash exterior walls fascinating. She leans too far and nearly topples out of his arms before he can tighten his grip on her. Sharon squeals again, clapping her tiny hands in exuberance. She seems to think it’s a new game they’re playing and squirms even more._

_“Tony!” Michael calls out, laughing. “I think you’re going to have to give her back now.”_

_Little Sharon seems to disagree, because she slams her tiny palm against the fogged-up glass with a squeal of glee, leaving an itty baby handprint on the window pane. It starts snowing, thick grey flakes falling from the sky. Goosebumps rises on Tony’s arms. Baby Sharon sneezes, going cross-eyed, tiny face indignantly shocked. She looks so much like her Aunt Peggy that everyone cracks up._

_Kate is already in the driver’s seat, seatbelt buckled, leaning out the window as she tells a funny anecdote to Tony’s mother. Maria has a white fox fur scarf wrapped around her neck and shielding the lower half of her face against the winter chill. Michael is setting down Jarvis’s biscuits next to Sharon’s baby car seat. In Tony’s arms, baby Sharon yawns, eyes drooping in lethargy. Over the sounds of Maria’s fluting laughter, Tony hears the jiggling of car keys and the click as it’s slotted into the ignition._

_The car explodes with a deafening **boom**._

_…_

“The Avengers shall no longer be a private organization. Instead, they will operate under the supervision of a United States panel, only when and _if_ that panel deems it necessary.”

If someone would ask Sharon Carter, she would retrospectively pinpoint this _exact_ moment as the moment when they lose Steve Rogers.

History (despite all evidence to the contrary) has long since painted Captain America as _the_ perfect soldier – books, comics, documentaries, and dozens of God-awful action movies. The higherups in the military with red-blue-and-white spangled stars in their eyes always seem to forget – or don’t dwell on – the fact that the much-lauded perfect American soldier lied on his enlistment form five times, or that his first foray into an active combat zone was when he defied the orders of his commanding officer, stole a plane, and jumped into Hydra-infested territory to save his best friend.

A loyal friend? A good man? A brilliant tactician?

Yes to all of the above.

But a good _soldier_? Obedient? Rule-abiding? Willing to be at the beck and call of the likes of Thunderbolt Ross?

Hah.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah.

The last time Steve took orders from anyone, it was SHIELD. Less than a year later, he’s completely torn down the organization, dumped all their top-secret files on the internet, and destroyed billions of dollars’ worth of tech and property. What’s left of SHIELD is still fishing bits of Helicarrier from the depts of the Thames river.

 _Sharon_ is a good agent. She’s proud of the work she did for SHIELD and the CIA. But she doesn’t like Thaddeus Ross. And she doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him. The little she knows of him – his obsession with recreating the super-soldier serum, his worldwide manhunt for the Hulk – paints an unpleasant, vaguely ominous picture. Even having him in the same room with Steve – Sharon notices the badly-guised, greedy glances Ross steals at him – sets off every alarm in her head. Having Secretary Ross here now, being the one to introduce them to the Sokovia Accords – it smells of a trap. It _stinks_.

Jim Rhodes and Sam Wilson start to row about it practically as soon as Secretary Ross steps foot out of the compound. The rest of the Avengers watch the two men go at each other, eyes bouncing back and forth like they’re watching a tennis match. As the debate goes on and on and on, Natasha sets out a chess game. Sharon keeps her eyes on Steve. He’s going through the Sokovia Accords, expression set, forehead faintly lined as he meticulously reads it page by page, Jim and Sam still arguing above his head.

He doesn’t look happy at all.

“You want white?” Natasha asks Sharon.

“Might as well,” Sharon says, rubbing her temples to try and alleviate the throbbing headache. She kicks off her thick-soled flat shoes and sits back on her haunches, cross-legged and holding her ankles.

“Secretary Ross has a Congressional Medal of Honor,” Jim is saying in a raised voice. “Which is one more than you have.”

Sam eyes him with a breath of coolness. “So let’s say we agree with this thing. How long is it gonna be before they LoJack us like a bunch of common criminals?”

“A hundred and seventeen countries want to sign this.” Jim’s voice is hard and even. “A hundred and seventeen, Sam. And you’re just like: _No. That’s cool. We got it-_ ”

Sam scowls. “How long are you gonna play both sides?”

Vision speaks up before things can get ugly. “I have an equation.” It will never not be weird for Sharon, to see Vision’s mouth moving and hear JARVIS’s voice come out.

“Oh, this will clear it up,” Sam says sarcastically, crossing his arms over his chest.

The sound of pages turning stops as Steve looks up from the Accords document, eyes on Vision, one hand still poised to turn a page.

Vision tents his crimson fingers together. “In the eight years since the Avengers Initiative was formed, the number of known enhanced persons has grown exponentially. And during the same period, the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. For a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, right now he’s unnervingly inexpressive. “Are you saying it’s our fault?”

“I’m saying there may be a causality,” Vision counters, voice mild. “Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict breeds catastrophe. Oversight.” He pauses almost performatively, looks around to make sure everyone is paying attention. “Oversight is not an idea that can be dismissed out of hand.”

“Boom,” Jim says, gratified. Sam’s eyebrow twitches in irritation.

Sharon moves a pawn forward in a Danish Gambit. The piece is finely carved, pale mahogany, polished until smooth, the heft of it fitting nicely in her fingers. “Your move,” she says to Natasha. Sharon sweeps her gaze over the occupants of the room – already, everyone is choosing sides, subconsciously or otherwise, an invisible demarcation drawn. Natasha moves the black pawn to E5 with an elegant flick that exposes the blue veins of her wrist.

“Sharon?” Steve looks over at Sharon. “What do you think?”

Sharon studies the chessboard, pretending to be pondering her next move. She can feel Steve’s eyes scrutinizing her, patiently waiting for her response. She feels unduly aware of every inch of her body under his gaze. On the other side of the checkered gameboard, Natasha observes her just as shrewdly. Sharon has always been jealous of Natasha’s eyelashes – they’re so long she’s surprised they don’t get tangled up every time she blinks.

“I think,” Sharon finally says, “They’re not _wrong_ to blame us.”

“You’re hedging,” Natasha tells her.

“We didn’t bomb those people in Lagos, Sharon,” Steve says firmly. “That was Rumlow. Just like we didn’t destroy Sokovia or DC or New York.”

“I know, Steve,” Sharon says tiredly. “I know. But think about how this all looks from their perspective.” She lifts shoulders in a helpless little shrug. “Wherever we go, death and destruction always seem to follow.”

Sam scoffs. “I think it’s the other way around, actually.”

Sharon ignores him. “I was an agent of SHIELD,” she posits. “Then later, I worked for the CIA. If I screwed up a mission and got people killed, I’d be held accountable. There would be protocols, an investigation, physical and mental evaluations, some sort of system… and the Avengers?” Sharon looks around at the team. “Who’s going to hold _us_ accountable? There’s no decision-making process here. You really want to know what I think, Steve?” Sharon asks curtly. She moves her bishop diagonal five squares, taking Natasha’s queen with a loud **_clack_**. She sees Wanda Maximoff flinch at the noise. “I think we need to be put in check. I think we need to accept limitations. If we’re boundaryless, what makes us any different from the bad guys?”

“Sharon, if someone dies on your watch, you don’t give up,” Steve says seriously.

“Did I say I was giving up?” Sharon asks sharply.

“We are if we’re not taking responsibility for our actions,” Steve insists. “This document just shifts the blame.”

“I’m sorry, Steve.” Jim throws him a look colored with incredulity. “That is dangerously arrogant. This is the United Nations we’re talking about. It’s not the World Security Council. It’s not SHIELD. It’s not HYDRA.”

“No.” A hint of impatience creeps into the cadence of Steve’s words. “But it’s run by people with agendas, and agendas change.”

“Steve,” Sharon says, drumming her plain, unvarnished nails against the glass top of the driftwood table. “Look around you. Every single person in this room is fallible. Every one of us has made mistakes – some more catastrophic than others.” Wanda ducks her head in mortification, avoiding everyone’s gaze, even though Sharon isn’t intentionally singling her out. “We’re superheroes, not omniscient. What makes our judgment more trustworthy than the UN’s?”

“What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go?” Steve counters stridently. He doesn’t look any more receptive to her suggestions than before. “What if there is somewhere we need to go, and they don’t let us? We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”

“That’s only conjecture,” Jim argues.

“Damn it, Steve!” Sharon hisses. He looks at her sharply. “You’re reacting exactly the way Ross wants you to! Do you think, for one second, that I like the idea of the Accords any better than you do?”

“Whose side are you on?” Jim demands. “You said-”

“I know what I said, Jim!” Sharon bites out. “Listen to what I’m saying _now_. Fine. Yes. In theory and on paper, the Sokovia Accords are just _dandy_. But in practice? With _Thaddeus Ross_ in charge of enforcement? _Hell_ no. That guy’s been obsessed with recreating the super-soldier serum for years. I’m not deluding myself. Am I seriously the only one to think that he’d jump at the chance to get his hands on your blood, Steve? Look at this.” Sharon raps her knuckles on the Accords document, all five hundred plus pages of it. “Does this look like a rush job to you? This has been in the wings since Ultron, ready and waiting for something like Lagos to happen.” She looks him squarely in the eye. “I mean, assuming my opinion matters to you-”

“Your opinion **_always_** matters to me,” Steve quickly says, tone inflected with a surprising amount of extremity.

“Then listen to me when I say that this isn’t a problem you can punch your way out of,” Sharon says adamantly. “We have to be smarter than that. Ross is offering us a carrot and a stick, and he’s counting on you to act impulsively, and he’s giving you enough rope to hang yourself.” She taps a fingernail on the words _‘SOKOVIA ACCORDS’_ printed on the front page, in large easy-to-read Times New Roman typeface. How thoughtful. “ _That_ is the carrot. He hasn’t shown us the stick yet. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to give him any reason to use it against us.”

“Knowing Ross, it’s probably something carceral,” Sam grumbles.

“Or he’ll use extortion,” Natasha chimes in. “According to Bruce, those seem to be his favorite tactics.”

Wanda’s voice is wobbly, rife with dread. “Do you think they’ll come for me?”

“We would protect you,” Vision assures her. Wanda looks at him and flushes coyly. Cute.

Sharon looks away, lips twisting in barely hidden contempt. She catches Steve watching her with a frown and shrugs unapologetically. She’s tried to hide her dislike of the Scarlet Witch for the sake of the team, but Steve knows her too well to be fooled. Sharon can’t help but think, somewhat resentfully, that if it were only another member of the team apart from Wanda – _any_ member, really – who messed up at Lagos, they could have salvaged this whole fiasco. Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow – the public would have more easily forgiven them, given their heroic history.

The Scarlet Witch has a history too. She has a history of setting brainwashed berserk Hulks on populated cities, joining forces with genocidal robots, and trying to kill Sharon’s only family.

“Checkmate in five,” Natasha tells Sharon.

Sharon makes a plaintive face at the chessboard. “Shit.”

“Not your best play.” Natasha makes a sympathetic face.

“You’re being uncharacteristically taciturn,” Sharon points out petulantly, stinging at the quick defeat.

“Because you’re saying everything that needs to be said.” Natasha looks at the others. “Sharon’s right. If we have one hand on the wheel, we can still steer. If we take it off-”

“Aren’t you the same woman who told the government to kiss her ass a few years ago?” Sam reminds her.

“I’m reading the terrain,” Natasha recants. “We’ve made some very public mistakes. We need to win their trust back.”

“Any of you seen the news recently?” Sharon tips over her king. Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her dun-colored corduroy pants and she fumbles for it. “People are scared. Really, properly frightened – of _us_. Not-”

She glances down at the screen of her Stark-phone and blanches, the rest of her sentence dying in her throat.

“Sharon?” Jim asks, eying her in concern. “You okay, kiddo?”

Jim Rhodes has known Sharon since she was barely a toddler. Sharon has seen the baby photos – all round pink cheeks and short blonde pigtails, wide blue eyes and pink jelly sandals. She was a cute kid.

She has a feeling that Jim and Tony still see that plump little girl every time they look at Sharon. She’s been a grown-ass woman for years now and they still occasionally slip up and call her _kiddo_ or _Share-Bear._

Her eyes dart to Steve. She tries to speak, but there seems to be something lodged painfully in her throat. She coughs effortfully and wets her lips with her tongue. The inside of her mouth feels very dry.

_She’s gone.  
In her sleep._

“Steve,” Sharon says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading to the end!
> 
> I know I said I was going to kill Peggy off, but I wanted to write a scene between Tony and Sharon at the funeral. Don't worry. I found another way to take Peggy out of the picture. Chapter 2 will explain why it is that Peggy is in no shape to take in her niece, and also why Tony isn't Iron Man.
> 
> I'm planning to have one flashback and one present-day scene for each chapter. The present-day scene will be narrating the events of Captain America: Civil War (it will stick close to canon until the funeral, then veer off wildly AU). The flashbacks will be showing pivotal events in Sharon's childhood - I've already got a handful planned out, but if anyone has any suggestions, or wants to request anything with baby/kid/teenage Sharon, you can do so in the comments section.
> 
> Updating soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised to let you guys know what exactly happened to Peggy in this chapter, but I couldn't fit it in. I wrote it into the next chapter instead! Next week, right at the beginning of Chapter 3. You won't be able to miss it.
> 
> I'm keeping this fic 'Gen' even though there's Sharon/Steve and Tony/Rhodey going on in the background, because the focus really isn't on the romance at all.
> 
> I don't own anything.

_“I don’t remember.”_

_Tony has lost count of the number of times that he’s said that – to the policemen and the SHIELD agents in charge of taking his deposition, to Jarvis and Ana and Rhodey._

_“I don’t remember,” Tony says, over and over and over again, as his eyes burn with fatigue and his interrogators’ faces (sympathetic and pitying and sorrowful and stoic) start to blur and jumble together._

_It was a car bomb, they tell him. Sharon’s parents, who were both inside, and Tony’s mother, who was closest to them, never stood a chance – the explosion killed all three of them instantly._

_It was Jarvis who found them – returning to the Stark Mansion after a quiet night off with his wife Ana, to see a giant smoking crater where the driveway once was and the black mass of smoldering metal that was once the auto-body of a car._

_Maria and Michael and Kate, their bodies completely unrecognizable. Howard Stark with ugly bruises mottling his neck, strangled to death. Peggy Carter lying spread-eagled in a scarily big puddle of blood, hand outstretched as if trying to reach for her gun, barely breathing. Like a painted backdrop for a slasher film._

_Tony and Sharon, both alive. They were close enough to the epicenter of the explosion that Tony was thrown back by the force of it, shrapnel leaving abrasions all over his body – his left foot bearing the worst of it. Mangled with pieces of glass and metal and other detritus embedded in the tissue. Sharon, miraculously, without so much as a scratch on her. Even unconscious, Tony’s arms maintained their death grip around her as she screamed her tiny little head off, face as red as a tomato._

_“There were signs of the perpetrator going through your house,” a SHIELD agent informs him at one point. His voice is bland, his face nondescript, his penguin suit plain – everything about him singularly affected to give off an impression of benign-ness and complete un-memorability. Disarmingly so. What’s his name again? Bill? Phillip? Will? Ian? Something that starts with an ‘I’. “Do you have any idea what your father had in his possession that would have merited that? Anything valuable?”_

_Tony shakes his head mutely. Somehow, he doesn’t think Agent Rick(?) means Maria’s priceless Qing Dynasty vase. Whatever sordid secrets Howard Stark had, he probably took them to his literal grave._

_He tries, he really does, but he can’t remember anything. Nothing about the assailant who rigged the car bomb that turned the Stark Mansion’s driveway into a barren and wrecked moonscape, who choked the life out of his dad._

_Nothing except for the handful of fleeting moments after the car bomb went off and he was slipping in and out of consciousness, everything feeling slow and dreamlike:_

_Debilitating and blinding pain shooting up his left leg._

_Blink._

_The acrid smell of smoke and ash, burnt metal and rubber, hanging heavy in the air._

_Blink._

_A glimpse of his mother’s body. His vision seizing briefly on Maria’s fox fur scarf, patches of the snow-white pelt black with soot and sprayed pink with blood._

_Blink._

_Aunt Peggy leaning over him, dark blood welling up from her scalp and trickling down to her right eye. There’s a shard of glass embedded shallowly in her hairline and light glints off it vertiginously. “Stay down.” She tells him, voice tight and husky with pain, like she’s injured._

_Blink._

_Sharon held tight in his arms, screaming and sobbing her tiny little lungs out._

_Blink._

_The sound of Aunt Peggy’s gun going off in succession, cut off suddenly by a cry of pain._

_Blink._

_Howard’s voice, hoarse and pleading and desperate and **terrified** : “Tony!”_

_Blink._

_“Not my son! I’ll give it to you! You can have it! Just don’t kill Tony! Not my son! PLEASE!”_

_Blink._

_Abrupt silence. And the gleam of some sort of strangely curved metal._

_After that, there’s nothing. Only darkness._

_When he next opens his eyes, the sheer whiteness of the spartan room he’s in gives him vertigo. The brightness of the halogen light bulb momentarily blinds him. Someone is holding his hand. He knows he’s in a hospital room by the feel of the starchy bedsheets and the clinical smell of the antiseptic. He has an IV drip hooked up to the crook of his elbow._

_A petite young nurse with dyed green curls is consulting the chart at the foot of his bed. Tony fixates on the incongruous splash of green amongst the sea of unblemished whiteness. The sight is so dissonant that he wonders if he’s dreaming, if everything is just been a very horrible, very lucid dream._

_As it turns out, it’s not._

_“Tones.” Rhodey squeezes his hand._

_It hurts to move, but Tony reaches down with one hand and tugs the stiff bedsheets up so it covers his face (see no evil). It feels safer this way – the smaller space and the dimness and the muted sensations. His pillow is wet. He feels his shoulders trembling with exertion. There’s a sickly yellow bruise on his left forearm. Tony digs his fingers into it, hard, until it’s throbbing and he leaves pink crescent shape marks imprinted onto the flesh. The pain centers him somehow. Clears his head._

_He’s still holding onto Rhodey’s hand, clutching it to his chest at an angle that must be uncomfortable for Rhodey. But Rhodey – staid and reliable Rhodey – just clambers onto the bed and joins Tony under the itchy bedlinens, holding onto him while Tony shakes apart in his arms._

_His left foot is bound in a cast. The doctors tell him he’s lucky to be able to keep it, the detritus from the car bomb damaged it so badly. He’ll walk with a limp for the rest of his life._

_Rhodey practically camps in Tony’s hospital room the entire time he’s confined to bed rest. Drinks the shitty, watered-down joe from the cafeteria. Snacks on crisps and gummy bears from the vending machine. Naps on uncomfortable hospital chairs with unfortunate paisley upholstery. Tattles traitorously to the nurses whenever Tony starts to do anything strenuous._

_He just about glues himself to Tony’s side when the doctors and nurses pronounce him well enough for a wheelchair, and the same when they hand Tony crutches and starts him on physical therapy, makes him take pills that they claim will help his rehabilitation._

_“Why are you still here?” Tony screams at him once, after a particularly grueling PT session. “What? Do you think this- the hovering and the tiptoeing- you think all of that is helping? It’s not! It’s helping fuck all! Why don’t you just LEAVE!”_

_Tony hates Rhodey. He hates everything. He hates the way he catches Rhodey looking at him when he thinks he isn’t looking – pitying and cautious like he’s something broken. He hates his physical therapist and the cupful of pills he has to choke down every day. He hates the callouses and the blisters on his hands from maneuvering around in the wheelchair. He hates the way the too-big crutches jar his shoulders when he uses them and the dead-fish floppiness of his lower left appendage. He hates that he has to leave the bathroom door open whenever he takes a piss because the nurses are afraid he’ll slip and crack his head on the sink any time he’s out of their sight._

_He hates that he didn’t die along with his parents. He hates that he has to live on – a useless, lame, cripple. He hates his mother for leaving. He hates his father – Howard, who was so smart and successful and affluent. The Great Howard Stark – all he had to do was **not die** , something so simple that even a **baby** managed it, but he couldn’t?_

_The regret is visceral and unendurable._

_He **hates** – and it all comes pouring out with no finesse._

_No booze. No drugs. No sex. In lieu of pickling his liver with whiskey and drugging himself into a sedated non-consciousness with narcotics, the only outlet for his wildly oscillating grief and rage is to direct it all at the only schmuck stupid enough to make himself into a target._

_Rhodey waits until Tony finishes going ballistic, then he leaves. He comes back an hour later with some takeaway coffee (a thick and aromatic chicory brew, plenty of milk and sugar, fragrantly steaming), a packet of freeze-dried blueberries, a booklet of graph paper and some pens._

_“Why are you still here?” Tony asks again, in a much better mood now that he has some caffeine in his system. The hot drink warms his stomach pleasantly. “Doesn’t the military want you back by now?”_

_“I’m on administrative leave,” Rhodey says simply. “And you need me. Where else would I be?”_

_Tony fidgets with his pillow, squinting at a spot somewhere above Rhodey’s right ear. When the conversation refuses to go away, he looks wildly at the graph paper lying on his lap. There’s already several pages’ worth of formulaic scribblings delineating the skeletonized schematics of a rudimentary, clunky-looking leg brace to help him walk and speed up his PT._

_“You think I should add a cup holder?” Tony asks airily, sucking at the end of the wooden coffee stirrer. Mm. Coffee. “I think a well-designed cup holder on your leg brace is just as important as a good shock absorption system and adequate lateral movement, don’t you? I mean, easy access to coffee does some people a world of good. Not me. Other people.”_

_“You may wanna think about some A.C.,” Rhodey recommends, staring evaluatively down at the pen-drawn schematic._

_Tony scoffs. “Everyone’s a critic.”_

_Peggy’s daughter Angelique, Sharon’s de facto guardian, brings the baby over to see Tony one day. One visit becomes two, then five, then ten – and then before they all know it, she’s dropping Sharon off for Tony to babysit almost every day._

_Peggy’s son Stefan is besieged with funeral arrangements. Angelique isn’t very maternalistic to kids who aren’t her own children. Neither of them can afford the time to properly care for a fussy, whiny baby. It doesn’t help that Sharon herself seems to have latched onto Tony as a touchstone for safety – throwing tantrums, howling and kicking like a banshee whenever they’re separated._

_Tony doesn’t go to his parents’ interment._

_He means to. He really does. He’s just coming out of the bathroom, catching sight of the somber funeral clothes laid out on the foot of his bed, and he finds that he just –_

_Can’t._

_They’re not having an open casket ceremony anyway. Howard’s body might be perfectly well-preserved, courtesy of SHIELD’s cryo-freeze chamber. But no miracle can be worked on Maria’s mangled cadaver – which is in literal **pieces**. Nothing the embalmers and cosmetologists can do to hide her dismembered limbs._

_Instead, he spontaneously baby-naps Sharon for the day and raids the vending machine for energy bars and juice boxes of every flavor. For such a tiny kid, Share-Bear sure is a picky eater. They hole up in an unoccupied hospital room, building pillow forts for Sharon to knock over in between taste-testing every flavor of juice box known to man._

_Her Highness turns her tiny nose up at strawberry-kiwi, spits out her mouthful of berry-lemonade, tolerates only a few sips of mango-orange, very shrewdly steers clear of the mixed berry juice, and finally settles on a box of plain old boring apple._

_“Really?” Tony regards the baby with great skepticism. “Not even the fruit punch?”_

_He whimsically offers Sharon the straw, and she sucks at it trustingly. Apparently, she’s not a fan of pear-pineapple-cherry, because the taste evokes a wail from her as she scrunches up her tiny face and turns big blue eyes full of betrayal on him._

_“Kid.”_

_Tony nearly leaps out of his skin._

_A man in a suit stands in the doorway. Dark skin. Dark hair in a military crop haircut. Completely inexpressive. Tony vaguely recalls him as one of Howard and Peggy’s friends from SHIELD – Nick Fury, like the name of a comic book character. Probably a pseudonym and not his real name._

_Tony is so sick of all the subterfuge and the shady, unscrupulous spy people, popping up all over the place and wanting things from him._

_“Cap’n Fury.” Tony turns to him, affects a lounging position, right leg dangling off the hospital bed. He idly digs the toe of his shoe into the groove between the floor tiles. “It was Captain, wasn’t it? Hell of a funeral.”_

_“It was,” Fury agrees, the cadence of his words utterly unaccented, without inflection. Tony can’t even detect a hint of disapproval. “A funeral you didn’t attend.”_

_“Well, I know Howard,” Tony says glibly, picking at a hangnail. “Even in death, he would’ve settled for only the grandest send-off. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Etcetera.” It’s a petulant, juvenile comeback, but old habits are hard to break, especially where Howard is concerned._

_“What do you remember about your dad, huh?” Fury demands._

_“He was cold,” Tony deadpans, his temper fraying. “He was calculating. He never told me he loved me. He never even told me he liked me. The happiest day of his life was when he shipped me off to boarding school.”_

_“That’s not true,” Fury disagrees stridently._

_Tony’s voice is stiff. “Well, then clearly you knew my dad better than I did.”_

_“As a matter of fact, I did.” Fury folds his arms over his chest. There’s a nostalgic connotation underlying his words. “Your father was a tough, cutthroat son of a bitch, I give you that. But he also loved you very much.”_

_It’s not what Tony expects at all, and he’s utterly blindsided. He starts to laugh, somewhat hysterically. He can’t help it. Little Sharon pokes her head out of her lumpy fort of pillows and gives him an adorable gummy smile, giggling along, blissfully oblivious to the tension in the room._

_“Here’s a list of the things he loved.” Tony runs a hand over his face. Despite his best efforts, his voice comes out wobbly. “He loved the sound of his own voice – end of the list.”_

_Fury scowls dourly. “You really think he didn’t love you?”_

_**Only based on any and everything he ever said or did** , Tony means to say. But he balks and the words curdle on his tongue, tasting like a lie, one that he doesn’t even believe himself. Not with his father’s last words like physical staccato pangs in his chest._

**_“Not my son!”_ **

_Judging by the expression on Fury’s face, he somehow seems to intuit exactly what Tony’s thinking. Maybe Fury is a mind reader. SHIELD seems to attract all sorts. “You got all the smarts in the world, Stark. **Do** something. Do something no one else can.”_

_…_

In an exaggeratedly affected robotic inflection:

“You have reached the life-model decoy of Tony Stark.”

Then, in a more natural cadence:

“If this is Pepper wanting to yell at me some more about paperwork, no, Pep, I haven’t finished it. Yes, I’ll get to it soon. Yes, I know you need it for the Board meeting on Tuesday. Don’t carp about it. I haven’t forgotten. I’m just in the middle of something – Flesh-Healing Seum, you know. I got this idea from Helen Cho’s cradle. It’s a serum that’s supposed to close any open wound in two seconds with synthetic liquid tissue. Still in its experimental phase, but if I can just get the chemical composition right…”

His voice trails off, muttering to himself, then seems to remember that he’s still recording.

“Oh! If this is Sharon calling to check whether I’m still alive – well, obviously, Share-Bear, I’ve been pining away for you in your absence, withering away to a shell of my magnificent, handsome, and humble self. You don’t call and you don’t text… well, okay, you do. But I still see how it is! An itty-bitty spider has told me that I’ve been supplanted as the most important man in your life! And by a younger, blonder model too! This is a betrayal of epic proportions!”

“To be honest, I was kind of rooting for Wilson. But no! You bypass that impeccable specimen of ideal facial hair in favor of a baby-faced nonagenarian! I demand an explanation! I mean, if you want a man with the shoulder-to-waist ratio as drool-worthy as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named so badly, you can always pay for one. We have the money. We have all the moneys! No need for such drastic measures!”

“Obviously, you’ve momentarily taken leave of your common sense. Or you’ve been inflicted by a debilitating mental impairment. It’s not too late to fix it. Let’s have dinner this weekend – we can sit down and relax and I can try to talk you out of this terrible, terrible life choice that you’re making. Is Saturday all right for you? Okay? Okay!”

“Rhodey! Platypus! Honey-bear! Light of my life! No. Wait. I can already imagine the look of suspicion on your face. I’m going about this all wrong. Nothing’s wrong, Rhodey. No, I haven’t blown up the Malibu Mansion again. Such outrageous accusations! Invite terrorists to your house _once_ and suspicion follows you forever. I’m hurt, Rhodey. I truly am. Our house is fine.”

The sound of a muffled explosion in the background.

“It’s fine.” He still sounds perfectly chipper and buoyant over the worrying grinding noises in the background. “That’s supposed to happen.”

Another muted **boom**.

“That too. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes! The Malibu Mansion is fine. Just. Don’t go into the basement. No reason. Just. Don’t. Because I might have had FRIDAY put it in lockdown. Not forever! Just until we figure out a way to get the fumes out. Nothing exploded. _Per se_. It’s FINE. You barely go into the workshop anyway. Oh, and when you get home, make sure not to step anywhere with yellow tape. There might have been a bit of, of structural damage. Just a little bit. It’s fine. I’ll fix it. You won’t even notice the difference. Love you!”

“If this is Rogers, you can go fuck yourself.” The voice goes on pleasantly. “If your answer is e) None of the above, please leave a message.”

On the other end of the line, FRIDAY speaks up. “Boss, you’re on fire.”

“Thanks, FRI.”

“No, boss. Your pants are literally burning up.”

“Shit.”

There’s a deafening staccato **thud** , presumably the sound of the phone being dropped. Then the voicemail ends.

“Tony,” Sharon sighs, running a hand through her long hair. “It’s Sharon. I know you don’t want to think about it, but what do we do for the interment? I can handle it if you want me to, but I don’t want to- I can’t leave Steve alone. Not when he’s such a wreck right now.” She exhales gustily, massaging the bridge of her nose with her thenar. “He needs us, Tony. I’m sorry, but you need to get over yourself and be here for him. Do it for Peggy’s sake if nothing else.” She ends the call.

She’d left Steve in the kitchen making breakfast. But when she returns, she finds the room smelling of burning bread.

“Steve?” Sharon hesitates cautiously at the doorway.

Steve turns to smile at her – a wretched, miserable thing. He looks awful. Even with the serum, his complexion has an unhealthy pallor to it and he has purple smudges ringing his red-rimmed eyes.

“Sorry,” Steve says, voice wobbly. “I burnt the toast.”

“It’s fine.” Sharon shrugs dismissively. “I wasn’t really hungry anyway.”

“I made coffee.”

“Is more caffeine really a good idea right now?” Sharon asks wryly.

Steve mimics her shrug and says nothing. This is normal. In emotionally difficult situations, he turns taciturn and monosyllabic. Sharon represses an irritated sigh and takes the offered mug, splashing some milk into the coffee, pausing a moment to let the pale milky color rise to the surface before stirring. Taking a sip of the bitter brew, she hums in satisfaction and rests her hand lightly on Steve’s shoulder, running a finger over the seam of his shirt, brushing over the pulse at his neck. Sharon can feel his muscles jump under her touch. They’re so tense, it’s like pressing down on steel. Hot too, like a storage heater.

Steve looks down at his plate of unappetizing charred squares, pushes it away. “So, uh, what happened yesterday after I left? Did the team decide what to do about the Accords?”

“Well, Jim left practically right after you did, so not really.” Sharon shrugs.

Steve’s brows furrow. “Jim left?”

Sharon balks. “He went back to New York.” _To Tony._

“And…” Steve rotates his plate of toast. An uncharacteristic nervous tic. “Have you heard from Tony?”

Sharon holds out her phone as an explanation. “I left him a message.”

“Oh,” Steve says, unaccented and inexpressive, then starts picking at his charred toast.

“Steve-” Sharon begins to say.

“I can’t, Sharon,” Steve says plaintively. “Not now. Not with Peggy-”

His resistance is paper-thin. If Sharon keeps pushing, keeps demanding answers, she knows he will succumb. But the thought of doing so when he’s raw from losing Peggy makes it seem exploitative and unscrupulous – like something Natasha might do to one of her targets. Sharon backs off, swallowing the sting of disappointment.

It all started after Ultron was destroyed and Wanda joined the team… and Steve and Tony had their big row. Sharon still doesn’t know what words were exchanged between the interlocutors, but the result is obvious. Before the dust of Sokovia even settled, Tony had cut all ties with Steve and declared the super-soldier persona non grata.

Neither man has asked Sharon to take sides. And likewise, she’s not eager to be drawn into the middle of a row between her family and her boyfriend. At the same time, she’s never known Tony to be able to hold a grudge for this long, especially not for any sort of minor grievance. And she can’t help thinking that Steve must have said something unduly awful to warrant it.

Sharon remembers when Tony and Rhodey became _TonyandRhodey_ – the way they leaned into each other’s spaces and practically finished each other’s sentences, completely attuned to one another’s presence. The easy cohabitation – Rhodey’s cheesy Air Force slogan mugs in the kitchen cabinets, his toiletries in the bathroom, his clothes in the bureau, new couches and cushions in his favorite colors, his favorite magazine subscriptions on the table. Uninhibited. Organic. Natural as breathing.

It’s nothing like what Sharon has with Steve. She’s known him for years, and yet she still feels as if she understands him so little. The way Steve can get about the people he knew in the forties, the way he just clams up and shuts her out –

“Hey, Share-Bear.”

Sharon jerks, coffee sloshing over the rim of her mug and her fingers.

Tony stands at the doorway, expression weathered, wearing a pair of chinos and a bedraggled T-shirt. Not at all like his usual immaculate and meticulous self. Sharon can hear the whirring of his leg brace as he shifts on his feet. Behind him is Jim, who shoots Sharon a tired smile. And Sharon is on her feet, taking one step, a second, all but throwing herself at Tony, who wraps his own arms around her and squeezes tightly, sticky coffee-stained fingers and all.

They break apart and Tony turns to look at Steve, who’s gotten to his feet and then frozen as if rooted to the spot. Sharon tries not to make it obvious she’s squirming.

“Tony, I’m so-”

“For Peggy,” Tony says stridently, and Steve’s mouth shuts with a _click_. “Nothing is forgiven or forgotten. I’m not going to sweep it all under the rug. I will be forgiving _fuck all_ … but just this once. For Peggy.”

Steve nods, expression crumbling into something like gratitude. He extends his hand. Tony only hesitates for a moment before clasping it.

Sharon looks away, feeling a ping of emotion somewhere in her chest. What is that? Discomfort?

No, that’s not the right word.

The right word is _jealousy_.

Not of Tony or Steve specifically. But of the fact that they both knew Peggy, knew her and missed her. Peggy Carter might have been Sharon’s aunt and family by blood, but for most of Sharon’s life, the older woman’s been nothing but a stranger, a bedtime story, a photo taped to a SHIELD profile. Sharon can imagine the invisible demarcation drawn between her and the two most important people in her life. It’s quite dissociative. There’s always been a part of Steve and Tony she couldn’t reach or share with – the part of them that loved and lost not just Peggy, but also Howard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suffering from writer's block. Frankly, I'm not quite happy with this chapter. Doesn't flow very well. Not enough dialogue. Mostly a filler/setting the stage. :(
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are welcome!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that MCU Sharon Carter's eyes are brown.
> 
> Oops.
> 
> Well... To-may-to. To-mah-to. I'm keeping her eyes blue anyway. It's her eye color in comic canon. And I just like the idea of Sharon being as different from Peggy, aesthetically speaking, as possible. It makes the Sharon-Steve & Peggy-Steve relationships parallel less creepy. At least, that's my take on it.
> 
> Yay! You finally get to know what happened to Peggy!
> 
> I'm quite vague about the timeline in this chapter. Because halfway through the flashback, I realized that if Sharon was a baby in 1991, she'd be way too young to end up with Steve when he thaws out. So I fudged the ages a bit. MCU timeline is a bit of a mess anyway. How much worse can I make it? :D
> 
> There's a brief discussion about religion in this. Not based on my personal belief. It's just what I thought would go best with the narrative of the story.
> 
> Inspiration from Doctor Who:
> 
> 1\. Can You Hear Me? 13th Doctor: I'm still quite socially awkward, so I'm just going to subtly walk towards the console and look at something. And then, in a minute, I'll think of something that I should've said... that might've been helpful."
> 
> Inspiration from Heroes of Olympus:
> 
> 2\. I can't remember who said this. Some main character's Dad: "If I really believed in Ghost Country, or animal spirits, or Greek gods... I don't think I could sleep at night. I'd always be looking for someone to blame."
> 
> Inspiration from Mortal Instruments:
> 
> 3\. Jace (the guy whose last name I never keep track of because it keeps changing): "When I saw him lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared."
> 
> I don't own anything. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome!

_The Peggy Carter that Steve remembers is tough and resilient, sarcastic and loyal, clever and no-nonsense. He still vividly recalls the way she kissed him and the way it made his lips tingle – fingers fisted in the front of his uniform, the tickle of her dark brown curls against his cheek, the taste of lipstick._

_Waking up after seventy years in the ice, learning that Peggy still lived, made him so happy at first._

_Then Fury tells him about the accident that happened twenty years ago._

_Seventy years. The passage of time is evident in the wrinkles on Peggy’s face – in the lines of her forehead, her crow's feet, the faint smile lines around her mouth. Her curls have faded from dark brown into a silvery-grey the color of iron, fanning out over her pillows._

_Dwarfed by the thick comforters and the giant fluffy pillows the way she is, she seems practically tiny. Her cheeks are hollow and her limbs are stick-thin. Muscles atrophying. Body cannibalizing itself. Despite that, with her expression so peaceful and her eyes closed, Steve can almost pretend she’s just sleeping._

_He realizes now that most of Peggy’s instinctive commanding and magnetic presence comes from her take-no-prisoners attitude and her authoritative speech. Stripped of that, as she is now, she’s just an old, decrepit woman. Infirm and feeble and dying. She looks like an apparition. Every inhale and exhale of her breath sounds like a crackly paper bag inflating and deflating. Her life ticking away to the background noise of the ventilator’s beeping._

_Shot in the shoulder. Missing the brachial artery by an inch. Massive blood loss. Coupled with blunt force trauma to the head and internal hemorrhage. Not to mention Peggy herself had been seventy years old at the time. Not exactly a woman in her prime. She went down. And she went down hard._

_The best the SHIELD doctors could do was stabilize her and hook her up to life support machines that keep her heart beating and her lungs breathing. In the optimistic hopes that, eventually, she’d recover from her coma._

_She never did._

_Steve sinks into a seat by her bedside, feeling wearier than he’s ever felt in his life. There are framed pictures sitting on her bedside table – images of a younger, dark-haired Peggy smiling with her husband and children._

_There are other, more colorful and modern photographs too, of a dozen people Steve doesn’t recognize. A young blonde woman with Peggy’s curls. A dark-skinned teenager with Peggy’s brown eyes. Even a smiling little boy, with dimpled cheeks and a missing front tooth, and Peggy’s dark arching eyebrows. All the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren Peggy never had a chance to meet._

_Steve takes a deep, wobbly breath. He reaches out and holds Peggy’s hand. Her frail fingers are engulfed by his palm. He can see the blue veins of her wrist through the translucent skin. He misses her and Bucky so much, like phantom limbs._

_He wonders what Peggy would say if she could open her eyes and see him moping by her bedside right now._

**_“Oh, Steve. You’ve always been so dramatic.”_ **

_Steve shakes his head at himself._

_The weather is balmy. The lacy net curtains have been drawn and the windows have been opened to let in some fresh air and sunlight. There’s a dark green cherry tree outside, with small red fruits hanging on the boughs like earrings, still glimmering wetly from the rain earlier this morning. Through the dark green branches, he spots a Chevron of birds in the air, migrating south._

_But the naturally clean scent of rain wafting in through the window and the smell of freshly laundered sheets can’t quite mask the odor of stagnant, stale air. Nor can it disguise the lonely aura of unfurnished cleanliness or plain austerity of the room. Apart from a succulent plant small enough to fit in Steve’s palm and a slightly dusty teapot, there’s sparsely anything to suggest regular visitors. No bookcases. No art._

_He’s so lost in thought, so consumed by the visceral sense of unfairness on Peggy’s behalf, that he doesn’t hear the approaching footsteps. When the door swings open, he’s completely blindsided._

_“Oh!” The blonde woman looks flustered when she sees him. She’s wearing a python-printed blouse and a skirt, a military jacket draped over one arm. Her blouse is strapless, exposing her slender neck and lightly freckled arms. The skin of her shoulders is a bright rose color, as if sunburnt. A black quilted handbag hangs from the crook of her arm._

_“What is it?” The man behind her – thick dark hair with an intricately sculpted beard and mustache – peers over her shoulder and sees to recognize Steve. “Oh, it’s you,” he says simply._

_That’s it. Glib. Anticlimactic. The corner of Steve’s mouth ticks up. It’s so rare that he meets someone who doesn’t make a big fuss about Captain America._

_The man turns to his blonde companion. Up close, the blonde woman looks to be in her twenties, while the man seems much older. In his forties, maybe?_

_“What are you staring at him for?” the man says glibly. “It’s not like you don’t know what he looks like. His face has been plastered all over the news lately.” The blonde woman elbows him. “Oomph!”_

_“God, you’re so juvenile.” The woman sends Steve an apologetic look, holding out her hand. “Sharon Carter. It’s nice to meet you, Captain Rogers.”_

_Steve fumbles to shake her hand. Now that he knows her name, he realizes where he’s seen her before. “I know,” he blurts out. “I mean, I know you’re Peggy’s niece and Howard’s son. I read it in your files.” Then he immediately wants to slam his head into the nearest hard surface. Why did he say that? Evidently, seventy years in the ice has done absolutely nothing for his social skills._

_“We went through your file too. The completely unredacted one,” Tony Stark chimes in. He sounds worryingly and unduly buoyant about it. “I had to hack into SHIELD’s systems to steal it. Quid pro quo, buddy. No worries, Cap. No harm done.”_

_“What?” Sharon says. “Tony!”_

_“What?” Tony asks, almost provocatively._

_“You told me Fury gave you that file!”_

_“Did I?” Stark looks thoughtful. “I suppose I did. Oops. Don’t tell Rhodey.”_

_“Oh, yes. Because Rhodey actually cares about proper social boundaries. Just like I have a problem with stealing top-secret government files,” Sharon says._

_“Well, of course you do!” Stark agrees genially. “He’s my Rhodey. And you’re my Share-Bear. You care so that I don’t have to!”_

_“You’re going to get me fired,” Sharon moans, though her tone is colored with reluctant amusement._

_“Of course not. You won’t be fired.” Stark shakes his head wisely. “You know why? Because of nepotism. That’s why.”_

_“Go and make the tea,” Sharon tells him sternly._

_“Go and water the plant,” Tony retorts, mimicking the exact cadence and connotation of her voice._

_“Um. Should I go?” Steve starts to edge away from the squabbling._

_“Are we making you uncomfortable?” Tony asks disarmingly, as he rinses out the teapot and the infuser at the sink._

_“Sorry,” Steve says._

_“Don’t apologize, Steve,” Sharon says dryly. “You just got caught in the crossfire. This is all Tony’s fault.”_

_“Hey!”_

_“I could get some mugs?” Steve offers._

_“I mean, you could. If you want to torture your taste buds that badly.” Tony turns on the electric kettle and sets it to boil._

_“I’m not a fan of English Breakfast,” Sharon elaborates. “And Tony is in a committed, monogamous relationship with coffee.”_

_“Ha. Ha.” Tony looks at Steve. “I remember that Peggy liked the smell.”_

_“That’s true. She did,” Steve says, with a nostalgic inflection. “I mean, she does.”_

_The water comes to a boil. Stark scoops the tea into the teapot and adds hot water, putting on the lid and letting it steep._

_“How often do you visit her?” Steve asks._

_“A few times a year if we can manage it,” Sharon answers distractedly, testing the dryness of the soil in the plant pot._

_Steve tries not to be obvious that he’s scrutinizing them. Tony practically has ‘Howard Stark’s Son’ stamped on his forehead – the suaveness, the glint of sheer cerebral ingenuity in his dark eyes, the facial hair, the mercurial mood swings, even a bit of the supercilious attitude._

_On the other hand, Sharon doesn’t resemble her aunt at all. At least, not at first. Aesthetically speaking, she is all lovely fairness to Peggy’s dark and exotic beauty, softer where Peggy is all hard edges. Even the way she wears her hair – straight and loose instead of up in curls. But there’s a glint of cunning, of raw slyness in Sharon’s blue eyes that’s reminiscent of the way Peggy handles a gun or directs a troop of men._

_“You know, they would have been proud of you,” Steve finds himself saying. Sharon looks up at him, eyebrows raised, a water bottle tilted over the potted succulent. “Peggy and Howard. If they could see you now, see the way you both turned out… I think they would be proud.”_

_As the tea brews, the aroma becomes overpowering. Stark must have put in too much tea leaves._

_“Yeah. So.” Tony puffs up his cheeks like a chipmunk’s. “Here’s the thing. When I’m not trying to talk women into my bed, I’m actually quite socially awkward. Maybe if you were a woman. But you’re not.”_

_“Tony.” Sharon sighs._

_“What? He’s not.” Tony turns back to him. “So I’m just going to subtly walk over there, and look out the window. And five minutes later, I’m going to think of something nice and appropriate and not-rude that I should be saying now.” He stares at Steve. “Okay?”_

_“Ignore him. That’s what I do most of the time.” Sharon makes a face at the super-soldier. “But it’s still kind of weird to hear the ‘your aunt-slash-father would be proud’ speech from someone who looks barely older than I am.”_

_“See?” Tony musses up her long blonde hair. “What did I tell you? Rude. Inappropriate. Not nice. I’m contagious.”_

_…_

Sharon finds Tony outside the church, standing in the shade of a cherry blossom tree, fallen pink flowers coating the grass. He’s sans suit jacket, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the top two buttons of his dress shirt unbuttoned. His forehead glistens with a film of sweat. The weather is too warm, the heat too scratchy and unreasonable to be out wearing a formal suit. Sharon shrugs off her black jacket as well, uses the wide bottom to fan her face. Her underarms are chalky with deodorant.

Tony nods at her. “Nice speech.”

“You were the one who helped me write it,” Sharon reminds him.

Tony shrugs, glib and noncommittal. “Well, credit where credit is due.”

Sharon exhales gustily, lets her head fall back. “I felt like such a fool up there,” she confesses. “Giving a eulogy for a woman I never even knew.”

“Well, who else is there?” Tony asks bluntly. “She outlived her kids. If you can call it living. Her grandkids farmed her out to us, and they probably don’t even remember her besides.”

“ _You_ remember her.”

“I’m not her family,” Tony says stridently.

“She’s your Godmother,” Sharon counters.

“She’s your aunt,” Tony retorts.

Sharon turns away. She doesn’t want to argue with Tony about this again. The church looms over them, a spired clocktower topped with a religious cross. Pebble-dash walls and gambrel-style roofs with polished grey shingles. Stained glass windows form unearthly images, arranged in a way that somehow manages to give the church building a disapproving expression.

“If it were up to me,” Tony says, voice husky with barely restrained emotion. “I would have pulled the plug on her years ago. It would have been less cruel.”

He sounds perfectly calm. Placid even. But deceptively so, like a placid sea surface hiding deep-water currents ripping across the ocean floor.

Peggy Carter’s son and daughter held onto hope that their mother would recover until the very end of their lives. After their deaths, Peggy’s grandchildren farmed out her care to SHIELD, who had continued Peggy’s life-prolonging treatment, predominantly because her existence was a tranquilizing influence on Captain America. Literally a living emotional crutch. Tony is right. It _was_ cruel. Blatantly cruel and exploitative and unscrupulous.

“Were my parents religious?” Sharon asks, changing the subject.

Tony’s brows furrow. He looks troubled. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I never asked. My mom was. I never know with Howard.”

Tony’s not religious, Sharon knows. As a kid, he never took her to hear Mass, even when all the other kids from school went. Generally, he tends to steer clear of all places of worship, no matter the religion – churches and pagodas, temples and mosques, cathedrals and synagogues, shrines and chapels.

“So you’re not a believer?” Sharon asks. “Even now?”

Tony scoffs. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Share-Bear.”

“Oh, come on!” Sharon huffs. “You’ve met Thor!”

“I have,” Tony agrees placidly. “Reminds me more of a frat boy than a god.”

Sharon laughs. “He’s the God of Thunder.”

“The God of Frat Boys, maybe.”

“Still counts.”

“Not really. He’s _a_ god,” Tony corrects her. “Lowercase. One of many. And technically, he’s not even a god. He’s an Asgardian alien who came to Earth and impersonated a deity. The human race has a word for that – it’s called _blasphemy_.”

Sharon shoves him. “Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“I’ve said worse to his face,” Tony points out.

“You really don’t believe in anything?” Sharon asks. She’s never given that question much thought herself, and she’s curious to know what he thinks.

“I believe in Hell,” Tony adds, almost arbitrarily. “How about that?”

“That’s horrible!” Sharon scowls. “Aunt Peggy-”

“Road to Hell,” Tony quotes glibly. “Peggy Carter was Director of SHIELD. Hell of a woman. But no one rises through the ranks of that place as efficiently as she did with a squeaky-clean conscience, Sharon. You know that. We all have to pay for our sins. You. Me. Peggy.” His mouth twists with bitter revulsion. “Even the sainted Captain America.”

The last part is said with a festering, impotent acrimony that Sharon doesn’t understand. Tony says it like it’s an oblique reference to something Steve did wrong, a past grievance that Tony expects her to know about. Something that he assumes she condemns.

“That’s a bit harsh, Tony,” Sharon says.

“My mother believed in God,” Tony says, voice colored with something flat and ugly. The sudden change of subject – from Steve Rogers to Maria Stark – gives Sharon vertigo. “I don’t.”

“At all?” Sharon doesn’t know why she’s needling him like this. She knows how he can get at times like this – cynical and withdrawn and itching for a fight. And yet, she continues to press.

Tony looks at her. His eyes are dark and angry. “Let me put it this way,” he says tonelessly. “My mother believed in God. And the day she died – that wasn’t the day I stopped believing in God. It was the day I stopped believing God **cared**. God might exist, Sharon. It might not. Either way, what difference does it make to us?” He looks up at the church. “If I believed in a higher power, Sharon, I don’t think I’d be able to sleep at night. I’d always be looking for someone to blame.”

Someone to blame for the injury that nearly took his leg, Sharon thinks, and that still pains him even now. For Yinsen’s death. For Obadiah Stane’s betrayal – a man who Tony always loved like a second father. For losing JARVIS to Ultron and Wanda. For the assassination attempt that not only killed Howard and Maria, but also orphaned Sharon, leaving Tony to lead Stark Industries and to care for a child when he was still barely a child himself.

“Do you remember it?” Sharon asks quietly.

She doesn’t need to elaborate. He understands instantly.

Tony balks. “No,” he finally says. “Just pain and heat and… metal.” He flexes the fingers of his left hand, rolling his shoulder. His face is weirdly inexpressive.

His phone rings loudly. Tony jolts as if snapped out of a trance. He fishes it from his pocket and checks the caller ID.

“Rhodey?” Tony frowns. “I’m still at the church. Yes. Hold on. I’m putting you on loudspeaker. Sharon’s here too.”

“Jim?” Sharon says, concerned. “Is something wrong? Did something happen in Vienna?”

“ _That’s a bit of an understatement._ ” Jim sounds almost hysterical. “ _Something happened all right, Tony. A War Machine drone just bombed the UN!_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Divergence from this chapter onwards.
> 
> Oho.
> 
> Ohohohoho.
> 
> In case it wasn't clear, War Machine drones are this universe's version of the Iron Legion.
> 
> I'm also having trouble nailing down Tony and Sharon's dynamic. Obviously, he was her main caretaker and role model when she was a child, so he's a bit more responsible there. I'm thinking of Morgan-era Tony. But as Sharon grows into an adult and Tony stops needing to juggle single parenting, I imagine he'd be able to step back from being a responsible adult for the first time in twenty years. Hence, the disregard for rules and authority, the flippant attitude, but without most of his canon destructive tendencies because he hasn't spent twenty years denying his grief and trauma with unhealthy coping mechanisms. Still Tony Stark. But toned down. Add in Sharon Carter's strong moral compass and her sensible, feet-on-the-ground mentality. And the result is the squabbling.
> 
> I imagine this could also be why Tony and Rhodey ended up together here. It's obvious in Iron Man (2008) & (2010) that Rhodey loves him, platonically or otherwise, but equally obvious that pre-Afghanistan, they would have killed each other.  
> It makes sense that with a Tony less of a loose cannon than he is in canon pre-Afghanistan, he and Rhodey would naturally gravitate to each other.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Updating soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the really long wait! But Real Life caught up to me and kicked my ass.
> 
> Thanks to all you subscribers still reading this. I really appreciate it.
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome!

_When Sharon Carter is five years old, Tony adopts a rescue dog._

_His name is Dasher. A cream-coated Saluki breed with fluffy ears. One year old._

_“Is he mine?” Sharon asks, ecstatic._

_“Yep. He’s a sighthound,” Tony tells Sharon as she strokes Dasher’s long elegant snout in delight. Dasher holds very still underneath her touch and peers up at her with big brown eyes. “Which means he has very good eyesight. And very active. And very fast. And a very big responsibility.”_

_Sharon pouts up at him petulantly. “I can be responsible.”_

_“You’ll have to train him.” Tony holds her gaze seriously. “Feed him and play with him and make sure he gets plenty of exercise.”_

_“I can do that!” Sharon insists._

_“And you have to be gentle with him,” Tony adds. “Because he’s deaf.”_

_Sharon gasps. “His ears aren’t working? Was he injured?”_

_“Yes. That’s why he’s very shy.”_

_“I’ll be careful with him,” Sharon promises, stroking Dasher’s fluffy ears._

_Dasher starts off shy and timid, but Sharon slowly coaxes him out of his shell. Dasher loves to be taken on walks, to chase cats and rabbits and other small animals. He loves games and toys, like stuffed animals and frisbees. He loves boisterous playfighting and racing with other hounds. He’s very strong and very curious. He doesn’t like to be left alone, always whining when Sharon leaves for school and the first to come bounding up to greet her when she gets back._

_Dasher dies when Sharon is fifteen years old, and she cries more over her dead dog than she ever did over her dead parents. For a long time after that, she’s convinced that makes her a horrible person._

_Whenever she looks at her classmates with their parents, she feels jealousy and envy. Crippling sadness and debilitating anger. A sense of unfairness. But not grief._

_That’s a problem. Because you can’t miss something you don’t remember ever having. You can **want** it. You can mourn its absence. But you can’t miss it._

_It doesn’t seem real, is the thing._

_She grows up being told that her parents died when she was a baby. Her childhood and teenaged years are interspersed with visits from work associates of Aunt Peggy’s and the blood relatives she barely knows, dropping in and out of her life with pictures of her parents or espionage stories about her Aunt Peggy. Every year, Tony brings her to lay flowers over her parents’ graves, to sit by her Aunt Peggy’s bedside._

_And none of it seems real. None of it **feels** real._

_The pictures are just people with familiar features smiling up at her fixedly from square pieces of paper. The headstone engraved with her parents’ names and death date is just cold stone. And for weeks after her first visit to Aunt Peggy, she has nightmares about the wrinkled, grizzled woman with pouchy, saggy skin rising from the dead like an apparition and eating her like a zombie, or stealing Sharon away like a wicked witch kidnapping a princess in a fairytale._

_The first time Sharon tells Tony about that particular nightmare, he laughs, and Pepper hits him._

_Tony is Real. His atrocious cooking skills and his crummy taste in ice-cream. His chronic control issues and his laissez-faire way of tackling life. His fondness for expressing his own opinions in excruciatingly embarrassing detail, to the exclusion of lighter topics, incognizant to the fact that such a personality trait is not universally endearing or charming. His tyrannical sovereignty over the choice of Saturday morning cartoons. His penchant for blaring EDM music at deafening volumes during his work binges. His goofy sense of humor and his obsession with cheeseburgers. He becomes proficient in making intricate five-strand braids by the time Sharon turns three. His favorite flower is the Rose of Sharon._

_“My Rose of You!” Tony would tell her._

_Flawed. Ridiculous. Childish. Goofy. Present. **Real.**_

_…_

Rain falls from the sky in a gentle curtain, the same silver as loose change. A woman wrapped in a black Barbour coat with the hood pulled over her face hurries down the sidewalk, head ducked, combat boots splashing puddles everywhere. There’s an open-air shopping center with people packed underneath the awnings of various storefronts, squeezed like sardines in a can, seeking refuge from the sudden downpour.

The woman’s stomach grumbles from the smell of pizza, sandwiches, and exhaust fumes, but she bypasses the strip mall in favor of a handful of mom-and-pop stores a few blocks over. Ducking into a grocer’s, bell jingling as the door swings open, she pulls off the hood obscuring her face. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a braid, tendrils escaping around her face and strands plastered wetly against her skin. She looks young. Slender. Lovely. Her sharp blue eyes scan the store, clocking the cashier manning the register and loudly smacking gum. A couple of customers idle in the Frozen Meals aisle.

The blonde woman snags a plastic shopping basket – a bright cheerful green – and starts loading goods into it. Six apples in pink fruit foam and clear plastic packaging. Yellow bananas. A single tomato. Whole wheat bread and a jar of own-brand chocolate spread. Evian water bottles. Folgers coffee. A tin of biscuits. Energy bars. Canned overstuffed ravioli in tomato and meat sauce. Generic paracetamol. A grey foldable umbrella. A packet of cheap black women’s underwear for herself because she needs something dry to change into.

There’s a selection of pastries near the counter. Sharon points at random. The cashier – a pretty young thing with long glossy black hair that gleams like oil – bundles the croissants, the lemon pastries, the empanadas, and the banana fritters into greaseproof wraps.

While the cashier rings her up, Sharon pretends to be engrossed in examining a pot of clear lip balm, watching the TV out of the corner of her eye. The news screens film stills of the UN building going up in flames. Smoke and blackened wreckage everywhere. First responders on the scene. A close up of the War Machine drone, the frame zooming in to the _STARK_ logo on the metal breast.

“ _-ripped through the UN building in Vienna. So far, we have heard nothing from either Colonel James Rhodes AKA the Avenger known as War Machine, or Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries-_ ”

“The things that capes can get away with.” The cashier chews her gum loudly, blows a bubble. “It’s messed up, huh?”

Sharon smiles tightly. Says nothing. Takes her purchases. Opens her umbrella. The bell above the door jingles merrily behind her as she leaves.

Their hideout is a vacated shop lot that might’ve once been a Korean restaurant, judging by the sign. Brown roof tiles. Animal graffiti art on the white exterior walls. Long-abandoned and old, with window screens instead of glass panes. The interior has been stripped bare. The windows boarded shut. Exposed wiring dangling from the ceiling. Everything coated in a thin layer of dust marred only by a few footprints leading to the mezzanine floor above.

Sharon jogs up the stairs, plastic bags swinging from her hands and bumping against her sides. She finds her companions braced against an oblong-shaped counter and looking at some holo-screens, speaking in low voices. There’s a shiny clean stripe swiped through the dusty floor where the counter has been dragged from its place by the wall to the center of the room.

“You haven’t killed each other,” Sharon says, pleasantly surprised. “Wow. That’s a real load off my shoulders.”

“Why rush?” Tony says. He’s bringing up a video on a holo-screen, frowning in a distracted manner. “The day isn’t over yet.”

“That’s what I get for aiming high,” Sharon sighs. She shakes the shopping bag, like wiggling a bone in front of a dog. “I bring sustenance.” In an almost Pavlovian manner, both Steve and Tony visibly perk up. “Good boys. Come and get it,” she coos at them like she would at yapping puppies.

“You know, your voice has a strangely emasculating effect on me,” Tony observes. “I don’t know why I put up with you.” Sharon fishes around in the shopping bag and sets down the Folgers coffee with a thud. “But you do have your virtues,” he concedes.

“Do I now?” Sharon says, as her adopted brother makes grabby hands at the Folgers. “Please don’t eat the coffee powder.”

“It’s the fastest way of getting the caffeine into my bloodstream!” Tony protests indignantly.

“I think I saw a kettle in the kitchen,” Steve offers, trying to be helpful.

Sharon kisses Steve on the cheek and sets down the food, tucks the coffee and an Evian bottle under her arm, ignores Tony’s pouting. “Be right back. Don’t start a fight, boys.”

“I never raised you to take that tone with me, young lady!” Tony calls after her.

“Whatever you say, Dad!” Sharon says.

The kitchen lights are long burnt out. The shadows are as black and thick as molasses. Sharon stubs her toes on the sharp edges of the kitchen counters three times in just as many minutes before she finds the kettle. The sink is right underneath the windowsill, the streetlamp outside a source of dim illumination. When she twists the tap, it gurgles and sputters before bourbon-colored water streams out. Rust. She lets the tap water run until the liquid is clear. Cups her palms together and splashes her face with the cold water. Outside, the undergrowth hums with the buzzing of insects, loud enough to be heard even over the gushing of the tap.

When Sharon returns to the others, Tony spins to face her, expression accusing. “You!” In his hand is the can of beef ravioli, which he jabs at her like an accusation. “What is this?”

Sharon looks at the can. “It’s ravioli.”

“Ravioli. _In a can._ ”

“Overstuffed ravioli in a can,” Sharon says, and relishes in his look of horror. He doubles over, wheezing like he’s asphyxiating. “Snob,” she says.

“Philistine,” Tony says. “What are you doing?” he asks, when Sharon wipes down a knife with the edge of her shirt.

“Chocolate sandwich.” Sharon unscrews the lid of the jar. “Want one?”

“There’s a perfectly fine Subway within walking distance,” Tony points out. “A pizza place, too.”

Sharon ignores him, looks at Steve, who’s eating banana fritters from a grease-spotted paper bag. “Give me the bad news,” she says.

“The King of Wakanda is on the warpath and wants Tony’s head on a pike,” Steve reports dutifully.

Sharon exhales tightly through her teeth. “And Jim?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tony drawls sarcastically. He has one hand wrapped around his coffee like a lifeline, and the other holding the tomato, which he eats like an apple. The weirdo. “Yeah, because Rhodey definitely ordered a hit on the UN _while he was still in the building_. Because he’s _that_ stupid.”

“Natasha says he’s been detained,” Steve explains.

“We have to help him,” Tony says angrily. “Why are we all hiding away here when we should be on a plane to Vienna, busting Rhodey out of a holding cell?”

“Natasha has it covered,” Steve argues. “She thinks she can get him released in a few hours. No one really thinks Jim did it. First those eleven Wakandans, and now their king? I think the CIA just needs to be seen doing something.”

“So Jim isn’t in trouble?” Sharon clarifies, taking a bite of her sandwich. Rich chocolate floods her tastebuds.

“No,” Steve says, then looks across the table at Tony. “It’s you we have to worry about.”

Tony scowls. “Why am I getting the rap for this? I wasn’t even _in_ Vienna!”

“Your talent for causing chaos and creating havoc knows no limitation. And your reputation precedes you,” Sharon says tiredly, tone tinged with a bit of amusement. “See? This is what you get for stamping your name on everything you design. What did you expect?”

“The goal was easy identification. Quick marketing. It’s good for stocks and morale.”

Sharon bites into an apple. Not bad. Bit powdery. “How’s that working out for you so far?”

“Ha,” Tony says. “Ha.”

“That’s really not helping,” Steve cuts in.

“Do we have any clue who’s capable of replicating one of your drones?” Sharon asks her brother.

“It wasn’t a counterfeit,” Tony says unhappily. “The drone that blew up the UN was the real deal. An actual, genuine, Stark-made War Machine drone really did blow up the UN on live TV.”

“Someone hijacked your programming?” Sharon says, feeling her eyes widening in shock. “I didn’t know that was possible. I thought Ultron was a fluke.”

“So did I,” Tony says, shooting her a gloomy look.

“Did they trace the drone?” Sharon asks briskly. “Where did it come from? Where has it gone? Any clue who stole it?”

Steve and Tony exchange a silent look. “We traced the flight path,” Tony tells her. “The drone came from the Tower. It’s still there. That’s where it returned to after the bombing.”

“What?” Sharon says.

“Yeah.” Steve gives her a sympathetic look. “That was my reaction too.”

“How?” Sharon demands.

“We’re getting to that.” Steve looks at Tony. “Show her what you showed me.”

Tony steps aside and gestures to Sharon to move closer to the holo-screen, tapping the replay button. It’s the same video as earlier. A thirty-second clip of a CCTV feed. For a while, nothing happens. And then she sees him. All in black. Broad shoulders. Shoulder-length brown hair. Goggles and a mask covering his face. A red star standing out starkly against his gleaming silver arm.

Sharon feels her own eyes widen. “Barnes.”

James Barnes. The Winter Soldier. He looks simultaneously nothing and everything like Sharon expected him to look like. Knowing what to look for, she recognizes him instantly from the newsreels of the Howling Commandos. But at the same time, he reminds her of an artist’s impression of a criminal – a hard-looking, almost brutal face framed with dark hair.

He’s only clearly visible for a few fleeting seconds. He crosses the room in a handful of strides and reaches one of the War Machine droids on standby. Tony taps the screen a few times. The pixilation sharpens until they can see Barnes inserting what appears to be some sort of chip into the armor joint.

Then Barnes is gone. In and out. Silent and undetected as a ghost.

“So,” Sharon says, once the clip has ended and the silence stretches on tautly enough to snap. “Barnes bombed the UN.”

“ _No,_ ” Steve snaps. “That wasn’t Bucky. That was the Winter Soldier.”

“The Winter Soldier _is_ Bucky,” Sharon points out tartly.

“If they follow the drone’s trail to the Tower and they storm the place…” Tony trails off, looking meaningfully at Sharon.

“They’d find the chip,” Sharon says.

“That doesn’t prove anything.” Tony shakes his head dismissively. “For all they know, _I_ could have put the chip there.”

“But we have the video,” Sharon says triumphantly. “This is evidence.”

“There’s one problem with that.” Steve crosses his arms, drawing himself up so he looms over both of them. “Because then Secretary Ross will think _Bucky_ caused the UN bombing.”

“Steve,” Sharon says, an irritable edge of impatience creeping into her voice. “Bucky _did_ cause the UN bombing.”

“It might not even be him. This could be a frameup.”

Sharon scoffs so hard she’s surprised she doesn’t sprain something. “Who would impersonate the Goddamned _Winter Soldier_? No one is _that_ suicidal.”

“Or we’re dealing with another puppet master,” Tony puts in before the argument can get any nastier. “The Winter Soldier’s probably just his accomplice. Maybe brainwashed. Maybe not.”

“There’s no way Bucky could be doing this of his own free will,” Steve says adamantly.

Sharon bites her lip, doesn’t share her doubts. Tony shrugs, starts sucking all the gooey seeds out of his tomato with obnoxious slurping noises.

Sharon makes a face at him. “Disgusting.”

Tony makes a face right back. “Delicious.”

“What do you mean, a puppet master?” Steve repeats.

“No offense to your bestie, Cap. But he never really struck me as the leading type. More like a follower. There’s probably someone else calling the shots. Pulling your buddy’s strings. Hacked into my security systems and doctored the footage. Whoever they are, they’re good. I’d shake their hand if I didn’t want to punch them in the face so badly.”

“When did you find the video?” Sharon asks.

“I didn’t.”

“FRIDAY?”

“No. Email.”

Sharon laughs. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish.” Tony taps the holo-screen a few times, shows them the email with the video attachment. The email only contains a string of numbers.

“Coordinates,” Steve says shrewdly. “Where is that?”

“Somewhere in Siberia,” Tony answers.

“What _is_ this?” Sharon wonders. “It’s almost like they’re taunting us.”

“It’s a trap,” Steve says shortly.

“Obviously.” Tony rolls his dark eyes. He drums his fingers, sticky with tomato juice, leaving smudges on the tabletop. “Might as well have ‘TRAP’ in neon and all caps. So. Do we bite the bait?”

Sharon shakes her head, lips twisting wryly. “You’re asking the wrong question,” she says lowly. Both men turn to look at her quizzically. “The question we should be asking ourselves is – should Steve come with us?”

“What,” Steve says, voice flat with disbelief. “Should I-? Of course I’m coming with you, Sharon. This is Bucky!”

“Exactly.” Sharon hikes up her eyebrows. “Bucky Barnes. Why him? Why send the video? Why put him on the mission? Why the notoriously lethal, notoriously erratic, unwilling HYDRA assassin with the unreliable brainwashing? What, was every other spy or assassin on a holiday that day or something?” Sharon folds her arms over her chest. “Sending that email to Tony, knowing the three of us were probably together. Knowing he’d show _you_ the video – that’s the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull, Steve. That was _deliberate_.”

“You think it’s a trap for Steve,” Tony summarizes.

Sharon lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s the theory that makes the most sense.”

She can see Steve setting his jaw, voice pitched low in determination. “Sharon, if Bucky’s this far gone, I should be the one to bring him in.”

Sharon wishes she knows the right words to change his mind, but all she can say is “Why?”

“Because I’m the one least likely to die trying,” Steve says bluntly. “And because he’d do it for me.”

“Maybe he would have in 1945,” Sharon says sadly. “But now?” He looks away, and she grabs his hand. “Steve, look at me please.” He does so reluctantly. “I know how much Barnes means to you. I really do. I know you’d do anything for him. But that’s the problem. Don’t you see? Because whoever it is that’s waiting for us in Siberia? They probably know that too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not sure when I'll be updating next, because I'll be quite busy during the next few weeks. However, there are only maybe 2-3 chapters until the completion of this fic, and I hope to finish writing and posting them by the end of this year.
> 
> Next chapter: T'Challa!
> 
> See you soon!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, Y'all! I wrote this chapter in a single day! Thankfully, it's not too long a wait this time. Only two more chapters to go before the conclusion of this fic.
> 
> I will be aiming to post Chapter 6 by November 7th. If I cannot make the deadline, then the quickest I will be able to update is mid-December. Don't worry. The plot and the ending are mostly fleshed out. I just have to type it out.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's subscribing!
> 
> As promised, T'Challa! And BAMF Sharon! Whooooo! More BAMF Sharon to come!
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome!
> 
> The End Notes contain spoilers of major canon divergence. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE SPOILED, DO NOT READ THE ENDNOTES.

The sound of rain against the roof is soothing, lulling Sharon into a state of drowsiness. She’s sitting on a faded, moth-eaten couch that might’ve once been blue, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder to Tony. A grease-spotted paper bag is being passed back and forth between them as they take bites of lemon pastries that dissolve in layers on the tongue.

If Sharon closes her eyes, she can almost pretend that she’s back home, cuddling on the couch, with Tony squashed between her and Rhodey. She opens her eyes and the illusion shatters.

Steve stands separate from them, out of earshot. Clad in full star-spangled regalia. Vibranium shield slung on his back. Shoulders squared. Spine stiff. Hands on hips. Jaw clenched and eyes shadowed. Gazing fixedly at the frozen clip of the Winter Soldier with an almost religious intensity. The frame is paused at a point where Barnes’s metal arm is just a blur of silver. He hasn’t said much since their argument a few hours ago. He hasn’t said anything to Sharon at all. His unfinished croissant lies abandoned by his elbow.

Tony catches Sharon’s eye after the dozenth time that she glances over at Steve and raises his brows meaningfully. Sharon feels her cheeks heat up in embarrassment.

“Shut up,” Sharon mutters.

Tony opens his mouth. Wisely, he changes his mind and shuts it wordlessly. “You want ice cream?” With the toe of his shoe, he nudges the fridge door open. “The mini-fridge is still working.”

Sharon looks at him, aghast. “We don’t know how long it’s been there!”

“It’ll still taste fine after we scrape the fuzz off.”

Sharon’s common sense bows out for the evening. A curiously recurring side-effect of prolonged interaction with her adoptive brother. “What flavor?”

“Er.” Tony checks the label. “Cookie dough.”

Sharon scrunches up her nose delicately. “Gross.”

“I thought you _liked_ cookie dough.”

“Not when they’re frozen!” Sharon protests. She sticks out her tongue at him, not caring how childish she’s acting. _Bleh_. “It’s like chewing horse feed pellets!”

“You have a lot of experience chewing horse feed pellets, Share-Bear?” Tony fishes in the depths of the mini-fridge for the tub of dubious ice-cream and pries off the lid. “Beggars. Choosers.”

The ice-cream _is_ edible after they scrape off the fuzz. Sharon takes tiny delicate bites, eating around the bits of frozen cookie dough.

Steve is still… doing whatever it is he’s doing. Doing his best impression of an inanimate statue, it looks like.

Tony watches Sharon watching Steve, then frowns and says “We haven’t talked about it yet.”

“Talked about what?” Sharon asks.

“This. Steve. You. Steve and you.”

“He is _right_ there.” Sharon nods at her boyfriend, who doesn’t react to them gesturing at him whatsoever.

“He’s not looking at us.” Tony waves a hand dismissively, making no effort to keep his voice down. “And his head’s a million miles away, anyway. Riding the Bucky-Train to Crazy-Town. Having a blonde moment.”

Sharon squawks. “Hey!”

“What? He’s blonder than you are.”

Sharon smirks a bit at the mean-spirited humor. “You don’t approve, I take it.”

A long moment of silence passes where Tony looks like he’s restraining himself. “Bit of a shock,” he manages to say. “I didn’t think he was your type. I mean, I remember the crush you had on Rhodey when you were a kid-”

“Oh, God.” Sharon groans, slumping back and covering her face with her hands. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

“Never.” Tony grins at her evilly. “Then you had that short fling with Wilson. Now Wilson – him and you, I can see it. I just thought you’d go for someone a bit more. Grounded.”

Sharon hides her smile behind her hand. “You don’t think Steve is grounded?”

“That giddy optimism is best taken in small doses.”

“You’ve seen us flirt,” Sharon reminds him.

“He’s Captain America,” Tony says, voice bland. “Everyone flirts with him. Heck, I flirted with him too.”

“I like him,” Sharon says softly. “I really do. Just. I know you don’t like him-”

“I like him just fine,” Tony insists. Sharon gives him a dubious look. “We’re just. Having a bit of a tiff.” He flicks his wrist like he’s swatting a particularly irritating fly. “I’ll get over it. Eventually. In another couple. Years.” He pins Sharon with a strangely intent look. “Are you happy, Share Bear?”

Startled into speechlessness by the abrupt subject change, Sharon nods jerkily. Tony’s dark eyes scan her face for a long while. Apparently, he’s satisfied with whatever he sees in her expression because some of the tension leaves his neck.

Mind scrambling, Sharon rewinds the past couple of days and tries to imagine it from Tony’s perspective. The argument between Steve and Sharon about how to handle the Accords and Secretary Ross. The friction between them during Peggy’s funeral. Even the argument earlier about the Winter Soldier – tense, aggressive, tone borderline vicious. Tony has seen them argue more in the last few days than he has during the past few years.

“It’s not always like this between us,” Sharon says.

Tony looks over at her. He’s put on his sunglasses and started interfacing with FRIDAY. Tiny images and letters scroll down the tinted red lenses. His hair is dark and fluffy. A five o’clock shadow is starting to grow around his neck and face. His expression is grumpy, eyelids drooping like he’s just woken up from a nap.

He looks, Sharon thinks, kind of like a koala bear – Fuzzy. Cuddly. Glasses magnifying his huge dark eyes to ridiculous proportions.

“Me and Steve,” Sharon elaborates. “We’re not always so…” She waves a hand around nebulously, searching for the right word. “At odds," she finally settles. "It’s a bad week. For both of us,” she explains. “You know how he gets about Barnes.”

Tony’s eyes tighten. “Fanatical? Bull-headed? Irrational?”

“I told him he needed to take a good hard look at his priorities,” Sharon says succinctly.

It’s more than that, of course. She realizes with some embarrassment that the reason she’s been so upset with Steve is that she’s gotten used to him taking her side, and she’s angry with him for not doing that now. It’s a matter of personal feeling rather than any justified anger. Overinflated self-esteem and wounded pride. It’s not a very flattering thing to realize about herself.

“I want him to rethink his stance on Barnes and come up with the right ideological opinion,” Sharon decides.

But that just makes Tony snort with suppressed laughter. Sharon can’t blame him. There’s no point in trying to dictate what Steve thinks or how he acts. It’s one of the main reasons why Sharon trusts him so much. But it’s also a pain to deal with on the rare occasions when they butt heads. Steve is quite similar to Tony, in that respect. It’s why both men alternate between getting along like a house on fire and going at each other’s throats.

Sharon sneaks another glance at Steve. He hasn’t moved. He might as well be made out of wax, put on display behind glass in the Captain America Exhibit at the Smithsonian.

“I’m not saying Barnes doesn’t deserve our help,” Sharon hisses in an undertone. Feeling restless, she runs her fingers through her damp blonde hair, untangling the snarls, separating it into sections, and starting to plait it down her back. “He does. He’s been through a terrible ordeal. HYDRA practically _lobotomized_ him. But James Barnes is also a _killer_. He’s dangerous. Not just to Steve. To us. To everyone. I don’t think Steve sees that.” She pauses, worries her bottom lip with her teeth. “No. Worse than that, I think he sees that, but he doesn’t care.”

Tony opens his mouth to say something, but then tiny letters start scrolling quickly down the lenses of his glasses, and he sits up with a start, an expression of alarm crossing his face.

“What is it?” Sharon asks, so sharply that Steve, on the other side of the room, snaps to attention as well.

“We’re about to have company,” Tony announces.

…

Captain Rogers is waiting for T’Challa when he reaches the mezzanine floor, seemingly alone. He’s in uniform, cowl over his face, both hands on his Vibranium shield. Not attacking. Not aggressive. But defensive. Tense and waiting.

“Your Highness.” Rogers inclines his head in the barest sign of deference.

T’Challa takes off his helmet. Meets Rogers’s gaze coolly. “Captain.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Rogers gets to his feet, keeping his movements slow and nonaggressive. But not letting his guard down for one second. Keeping his eyes on T’Challa’s form. “I heard about your father. I’m sure he was a good man.”

T’Challa curls his hands into fists. He feels the engraving of his father’s ring digging into the skin of his fingers. He recalls the feel of his father’s blood on his hands. On his clothes. The copper smell of it. Phantom sensations. “In my culture, death is not the end. It’s more of a… stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet – they lead you into the green veldt where you can run forever.”

“That sounds,” Rogers pauses, lips twisting wryly, before continuing diplomatically, “A lot more peaceful than a lot of other religion’s version of the afterlife.”

“My father thought so.” T’Challa lets his eyes go cold. “I am _not_ my father.” He puts his helmet back on. “Now. Where is Stark?”

Rogers’s face goes hard, though there’s still a glimmer of regret in his eyes. “It wasn’t Tony, Your Highness. He’s being framed.”

“It was his suit!”

“But not his programming,” Rogers insists. “What possible reason could Tony have for bombing the UN in broad daylight? He has no motive! Let us investigate this, T’Challa. We’ll figure out who was behind it. We’ll figure out who really killed your father.”

T’Challa snarls. “I _know_ who killed my father!”

“This isn’t Wakanda, Your Highness,” Rogers says harshly. “You aren’t in charge here. You’re violating the Accords just by being here. This is not your jurisdiction.”

“It _became_ my jurisdiction when the King of Wakanda was killed on foreign soil in a blatant act of war!” T’Challa takes a step forward. Rogers brings up his shield, body coiling tight as a bowstring. “Tell me this, Captain Rogers, if your friend truly is innocent, if he truly did not commit this crime, then why are you hiding him from me?”

“Because you’re here to _kill_ him!”

“My father is _dead_!” T’Challa roars. “I am here to bring Stark back to Wakanda, where we will hold him accountable for his crimes!”

“You’ll bring Tony back to Wakanda and make sure he never sees the light of day again, regardless of guilt.” Rogers shakes his head. “I won’t let that happen.”

“Your concurrence will not be necessary.”

Rogers’s eyes flick to something behind T’Challa, and he yells “Tony, run!”

T’Challa turns. He glimpses the back of a figure dressed in a thick jacket with a hood covering his head, catches the gleam of Stark’s leg brace. Then Rogers throws his shield. The Vibranium disc glances off T’Challa’s mask, the force of it making the Wakandan prince stagger back. Then Rogers kicks him in the chest with both feet, sending both of them sprawling.

“Made you look,” Rogers says. He sounds winded. “Is your suit made out of Vibranium?”

T’Challa picks himself up. Rogers has positioned himself in front of one of the exits, the direction Stark ran to. His unspoken challenge cannot be any clearer: _You want him, you’ll have to go through me_.

T’Challa narrows his eyes. “The Black Panther has been the protector of Wakanda for generations. A mantle passed from warrior to warrior. And now, because your friend murdered my father, I also wear the mantle of king. So I ask you, as both warrior and king – how long do you think you can keep your friend safe from me?”

Rogers pulls back his upper lip, baring his teeth in a snarl. “Long enough.”

T’Challa moves first, bending low and rushing forward, putting full force into the blow to Rogers’s midsection. Rogers grunts at the impact and they grapple. Rogers jerks his knee up, but T’Challa shields his face from the blow with his arms. Rogers lashes out with his elbow. T’Challa blocks the hit, lands a punch on the other man’s face, another one in the gut, a third to the face with enough force to make Rogers’s head snap back.

T’Challa wraps his hands around Rogers’s head, holding him still as he brings first his right knee, then his right foot to Rogers’s side. Rogers falls to his knees, clamping T’Challa’s right foot to his side. T’Challa gets close and grabs Rogers’s head, letting himself fall backward and pulling Rogers with him, using the momentum to throw Rogers over his shoulder.

T’Challa unsheathes his Vibranium claws. He swipes at Rogers and leaves a row of cuts on his left cheek. Rogers thrusts his shield, edge first. T’Challa grabs the Vibranium disc mid-thrust and yanks it out of the other man’s grip. Rogers sweeps his legs out from underneath him. T’Challa goes down, winded. He lies there and waits for the other man to get close. He twists, grabbing Rogers’s ankle as leverage, and rolls.

Rogers goes down hard. T’Challa straddles him and slams Rogers’ head against the floor. Once. Twice.

Adrenaline surging through his veins, T’Challa leaves Rogers where he is, still groaning, and sprints in the direction Stark fled to.

Down the stairs. Out of the building. He spies Stark fleeing down the street on the other side of the road. T’Challa gives chase. He ignores the honking of the traffic as he skids across the hood of a car. Stark has a head start, but T’Challa is younger, stronger, and has righteous anger fueling him.

Stark starts scaling the fire escape stairs up the side of an abandoned greenhouse. T’Challa follows. He hears glass breaking just as he reaches the roof to find it deserted. The building has a slanted glass extension, adjacent to a building with a conspicuously broken window facing T’Challa’s direction – a jagged hole in the glass big enough for a man to fit through.

Grudgingly impressed by Stark’s ingenuity despite himself, T’Challa follows. He slides down the slanted glass roof, launches himself through the broken window, and finds himself in a musty old storage area. He spies Stark running on the catwalk above and gives chase, gaining on him quickly.

On the roof, just as T’Challa thinks he has Stark good and cornered, the older man jumps off the roof _again_. Stark skids down the sloping glass panes of the greenhouse roof like it’s the world’s most dangerous waterslide.

 _What_ is Stark’s plan? There are no more abandoned greenhouses for him to hide in or flee to. This building is the last one on the block. There is nowhere to run. The only thing between the roof and the ground is the light rail tracks –

Ah.

The light rail.

T’Challa watches, half-hoping Stark kills himself attempting the jump.

But no such luck.

Stark reaches the roof’s edge just as the light rail whistles past. He uses the momentum to vault himself onto the train’s roof, landing somewhat steadily and somehow managing not to smash his head in the attempt.

T’Challa follows. Spills down the glass roof. Pitches himself onto the train. Lands in a catlike crouch. There’s a tunnel coming up ahead. Stark keeps his body low. He jumps for the first ladder he sees, then scrambles up the wall and over to the other side. T’Challa hurls himself at the ladder, his body hitting the rungs with a loud _clang_.

They’ve ridden the light rail right out of the sector of abandoned lots and fallow fields. On the other side of the wall is a public park. T’Challa spies Stark ahead, weaving between trees, and gives chase. He splashes through puddles, sending mud and water flying everywhere.

“Hey!” A man carrying gardening tools recoils from the spray of mud. “Be careful, assholes!”

T’Challa emerges from the park onto a crowded street packed with cars and surging with people. Momentarily losing sight of Stark, he turns on his heel until he sees the familiar silhouette disappearing through the front doors of a tall building – a hotel.

“Look out!”

“What are you _doing_?”

Stark sees him coming and starts knocking over luggage trolleys and cleaning carts in an attempt to slow him down. T’Challa swerves around the people in the waiting area, leaps cleanly over capsized trolleys, making a cleaning lady shriek in distress.

Stark sprints into an unoccupied elevator just as the doors are closing. T’Challa is just a second too slow. “No!” he shouts, slamming a fist into the elevator doors, leaving a sizeable dent behind.

Ignoring the people pointing and whispering, T’Challa forces the elevator doors open with his claws, shoving them apart and leaving them horribly bent out of shape. He leaps, grabbing ahold of the bottom of the lift as it rises, and waits.

The top floor, of course.

…

The roof of the hotel is barren except for a few rows of solar panels. The hotel is the tallest building in several blocks. There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere to climb to. Nowhere to jump to. No escape.

“Nowhere to run, Stark,” T’Challa calls.

Stark stands near the edge of the roof, hood up, his back to T’Challa, not even trying to run anymore. T’Challa closes the distance between them in two large strides, closes his fingers around Stark’s surprisingly slender arm, and forces him to turn –

T’Challa drops the arm like it’s scalding. “You are not Stark.”

The hood falls and a long blonde plait falls out. The woman it belongs to smiles at him – it’s a smile with teeth. Impish and fierce and wild. “Made you look,” she says.

How could T’Challa have been such a fool? Sliding down roofs, jumping onto trains, sprinting those distances – Stark, with his bad leg, could never have accomplished those feats. T’Challa was blinded by the thought of vengeance, his rationale clouded by rage and grief –

The blonde woman whips out a pistol and shoots him point-blank in the face. It doesn’t hurt him. It barely tickles. But it does startle him into stepping back. The blonde takes a running leap off the roof, one hand outstretched as if reaching for thin air –

That’s when the cloaking is disengaged, and T’Challa finds himself staring as the blonde woman is hauled through the open doors of a Wakandan Talon Fighter, by none other than Captain Rogers. _T’Challa’s_ Talon Fighter. It’s not a big leap from there to deduce that Stark is the one piloting the aircraft. T’Challa fleetingly entertains the thought of pursuing them, of leaping the gap between the roof and the plane, but in all likelihood, he would accomplish nothing but to plummet foolishly to his death.

As the aircraft doors start to close, the blonde woman wiggles her fingers in a cheeky wave. T’Challa punches the ground in frustration as the cloaking is engaged. The aircraft shimmers then becomes invisible to the naked eye. Wakandan cloaking technology is, as always, absolute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter: Someone dies.
> 
> As always, please feel free to drop a comment or kudos and let me know what you think.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!
> 
> First off, a really big thank you to everyone who subscribed! And everyone who kudos!
> 
> This chapter got way too wordy, but I really didn't want to stop at a cliffhanger.
> 
> Major emotional turmoil coming up! Also a really intense fight scene! Someone dies!
> 
> I also present to you more BAMF Sharon! Enjoy!
> 
> Inspiration from DW:
> 
> 1\. Mummy on the Orient Express. The 12th Doctor talking to himself: "Ninety-nine percent sure. Really? Ninety-nine percent? That's quite high. Is that the figure you're sticking with? Okay, okay. Seventy-five. Well, that's jumped quite a bit. You've just lost twenty-four percent."
> 
> Comments and kudos are welcome! <333

_“It’s like all my Christmases and birthdays are happening all at once,” Tony says as they step into the Wakandan fighter jet. He spreads his arms wide open like he’s asking for a hug. “Come to Papa.”_

_The interior is bigger than Steve was expecting – minimalist lighting and sleek lines. Most of the aircraft seems to have been built out of Vibranium, the same material as Steve’s shield, with almost alien-looking symbols glowing on what he assumes is the control panel. Even to his inexpert eyes, he can easily tell that the technology is decades ahead of even Stark-tech._

_Steve steps forward, catches his reflection on a polished metal surface, and grimaces. The throbbing area around his eye where T’Challa punched him is already starting to bruise a livid purple color, edged with a nauseating sickly green._

_“Done admiring yourself?” Tony asks, already messing around with the flight panel. “Yeah, you look a real picture.”_

_Steve sighs wryly. “Thanks, Tony.” He prods experimentally at the bruise._

_“No, really,” Tony insists. “That purple really brings out the bit of green in your eyes. It’s really striking actually. It’s a good look on you. You should wear it more often.”_

_“Your concern for my wellbeing is really touching.” Steve’s tone is bland._

_“Should I be concerned? Are you very injured?”_

_“Only my pride,” Steve admits._

_“Well, don’t look at me for help,” Tony says dryly. “I’m more likely to damage it even more.”_

_“I thought it’d be something like that,” Steve says._

_“So, how badly did His Meow-ness kick your ass?” Tony asks. He slides his palm down a console, and the entire dashboard lights up. He makes a satisfied humming noise deep in his throat before continuing to work. “I mean, I couldn’t exactly get a clear view.”_

_“He didn’t kick my ass,” Steve protests. “I threw the fight.”_

_Tony squints at him. “Sure, you did.”_

_“It was part of the plan, Tony.”_

_“Sure, it was.”_

_“Remind me again why I’m trying so hard to keep you out of prison, Stark?” Steve says._

_“Aw.” Tony grins. “You’d miss me, really.”_

_“I would.” Steve thinks about that for a second. “…T’Challa must have hit me harder than I thought.”_

_“Ha. Ha.” Tony glances at him and seems to read the expression on his face. “Don’t worry about Sharon. She’s pulled our bacon from the fire loads of times before. She’s run ops more dangerous than this all the time. This is just another Monday for her. A slow Monday.”_

_“It’s Friday,” Steve corrects him. “And I’m not worried.”_

_“You are.” Tony throws him a sharp look. “Underneath all that stars and stripes, you, Steve Rogers, are a big ball of anxiety.”_

_“Thanks,” Steve says flatly._

_“You’re welcome,” Tony says magnanimously. He pulls out his Stark-phone and swipes across the touchscreen a few times, turning the device and showing Steve the display – two blinking red dots moving rapidly across the screen. “See? She’s running circles around His Meow-jesty. And she’s making it look easy.”_

_“I don’t like splitting up,” Steve manages to say._

_“On the topic of Sharon.” The instrument panel flickers and dims, flashing red like Tony’s hit some sort of firewall. He bangs his fist on it several times, does something with his glasses that manages to bypass the security, then continues speaking as if there was no interruption. “We’ve been talking about you.”_

_Steve folds his arms over his chest. He’s tense. “Were you now?”_

_“She’s worried- we’re worried that-”_

_“That I won’t be able to face Bucky,” Steve finishes, feeling miserable and bone-weary and heartsick._

_With a final flourish, Tony bypasses the last of the firewalls and the aircraft comes alive with a faint humming noise barely perceptible even to Steve’s serum enhanced hearing. The dark-haired man shifts to face him, wincing slightly when he puts his weight onto his bad ankle._

_“Are you okay?” Steve asks._

_Tony waves him off. “Bucky Barnes is your brother. He’s your family. God knows that if our positions were swapped and Sharon was in your place and I was in his-”_

_“She’d throw me headfirst into the path of an oncoming train without hesitation,” Steve puts in, lips twitching at the thought._

_“You know it’s true love when you’d throw each other under the bus for your pseudo adopted brothers?” Tony asks._

_“If the shoe fits,” Steve says ruefully._

_Tony shakes his head in exasperation, but he’s smiling. “I’m not asking you to choose between us,” he says, turning serious again. At least he doesn’t sound angry. Small mercies. “Because I know that’s not fair. But if it comes down to a fight – which, with our streak of luck, it probably will – I need to know that Sharon and I can put our lives in your hands.”_

_“I love Sharon,” Steve says._

_“You loved Peggy too,” Tony counters, pointedly but not unkindly, and Steve flinches._

_None of what the Winter Soldier did was Bucky’s fault. Steve was sure of that. He’s still sure of that. HYDRA was the one responsible for giving the order. HYDRA was the hand holding the gun, who chose to pull the trigger. But Bucky’s innocence doesn’t change the fact that Peggy and Howard and Sharon’s parents all suffered for it. Even Steve – sometimes he thinks about Bucky and can’t separate him from what happened to Peggy, try as he might. The sheer brutality of it all._

_“If I could have been there to die for them that day, I would have,” Steve says, quiet and sincere._

_Tony scowls. “I don’t want you to die at all, you halfwit.” His words break the mounting tension between them. The brunette moves to the flight panel, starting up the flight path. “Now let’s go get our girl.”_

…

“Are they all-?” Tony’s question trails off into uncertain silence.

“Dead?” Steve finishes grimly. “Yeah.” His jaw is set, his expression obscured by his cowl. In the shadows of the Soviet bunker, all the color of his blue eyes seems to have been leached out, leaving them flat discs of iron-grey.

Cryostasis chambers. Five of them in a semicircle. Filled with vapor and lit from within with a sickly yellow light. Like cylindrical snow globes. Through the tinted reinforced glass, they see a muscular figure sitting down in each. Eyes closed. They look peaceful enough to be sleeping.

If not for the bullet-shaped holes in the glass and the blood dripping down their foreheads.

Sharon pauses in front of one of the cryo-chambers – the only empty one. “One of them is missing,” she warns the other two.

“Do you think Barnes did this?” Tony asks in a shocked tone tinged with befuddlement, lingering by one of the cryostasis chambers. The corpse’s head is lolling, arms slung over the armrests.

Neither of the other two responds. For a moment, there is only the hissing of steam and vapor.

“ _If it’s any comfort, they died in their sleep._ ”

Tony starts badly. Steve stills. In one smooth motion, Sharon reaches down, draws her semi-automatic pistol from her thigh holster, and thumbs the safety off.

“What’s going on?” Tony hisses to her. Sharon shakes her head mutely.

The lights turn on behind a small square window set around face-high, revealing a man standing behind it, staring at them. With the lights off, the darkened glass blended in so well with the shadowy walls on either side that Sharon realizes she’s walked past it without noticing.

Sharon cocks her pistol, but Steve reacts even faster. He sends his shield flying, but the edge of the Vibranium disc slams into the window with a hollow _clang_ and ricochets back in a perfectly straight line. It doesn’t leave so much as a dent.

“ _Please, Captain._ ” The poor speaker connection crackles and distorts the man’s voice, but the scorn in it is discernible. “ _The Soviets built this chamber to withstand the launch blast of UR-100 rockets._ ”

“I’m betting I can beat that,” Tony says.

Sharon stays close to Tony, finger resting the pistol’s trigger. Steve is on the opposite side of the room, hugging the right wall.

“ _Oh, I’m sure you could, Mr. Stark,_ ” the man says, irksomely patronizing. “ _Given time. But then you’d never know why you came._ ”

His accent is like Wanda’s, Sharon realizes. The way they round out their vowels and roll their R’s. The thickness of their voices when they pronounce their S’s.

“You killed innocent people in Vienna just to bring us here?” Steve asks.

The man moves closer to the glass. “ _I thought about nothing else for over a year_ ,” he confesses. His voice is pitched low and intimate, like two men sharing a secret. It makes Sharon’s skin crawl. “ _I studied you. I followed you. But now that you’re standing here, I just realized…_ ” He peers closer to Steve with detached curiosity, like a scientist studying a lab sample, deciding what to dissect next. “ _There’s a bit of green in the blue of your eyes,_ ” he goes on. “ _How nice to find a flaw._ ”

Sharon speaks up then: “You’re from Sokovia.” Next to her, she senses Tony tensing. “Is that why you framed Tony? Because of Ultron? You want revenge.”

“ _Sokovia was a failed state long before you blew it to hell._ ” The man shakes his head, nose flaring with emotion, eyes blown wide and glassy. “ _No. I’m here because I made a promise._ ”

“You lost someone?” Steve asks, not unkindly.

“ _I lost everyone – and so will you._ ”

An old Soviet computer, circa the 1980s, turns on. The screen displays a date in white text – 16 Декабрь 1991. Sharon feels her blood run cold.

“ _An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again,_ ” the man goes on hoarsely. “ _But one which crumbles from within?_ ” He looks away from Steve, gaze lingering for a moment on Tony, before his eyes come to a stop on Sharon, and there they stay, the faintest smirk twisting his lips. “ _That’s dead. Forever._ ”

The footage plays: It’s a mansion’s driveway, filled with people and cars.

“I know those people,” Sharon says quietly.

A distinguished older man with silver hair and an elegant blonde woman on his arm. A dark-haired teenager entertaining a giggling blonde toddler. Aunt Peggy, dark-haired and skin unlined, eyes open and expression animated. Sharon’s parents laughing merrily by the car.

Sharon’s heart seems to be trying to crawl up her esophagus. 16 Декабрь 1991. Her and Tony. Steve and Barnes. The pieces of the puzzle all coming together. “What is this?” she whispers.

She gets her answers soon enough.

There is the bomb going off – fire and heat and shrapnel. There is Sharon’s parents and Tony’s mother all dead before they hit the ground.

Then there is _him_.

There is him walking through the burning wreckage like a harbinger of death, face unmasked. There is him stepping over the still-cooling corpses of Sharon’s parents. There is Aunt Peggy taking a bullet to the shoulder and a blow to the face before going down hard, unmoving as blood pools around her, she will never move again. There is Howard Stark begging for his son’s life. There is _his_ hand wrapped around Tony’s father’s throat, the flickering flames glinting strangely off the silver fingers.

Sharon is shaking all over. Her arm hangs limply by her side, her pistol weakly clutched in her fingers. Something unnamable is building up inside her, like methane gas beneath the ocean floor.

She can feel Steve’s intent gaze on her face, but her first instinct is to look to Tony.

(Her first instinct is always Tony.)

Tony is staring at the screen, horror writ large over his face. His features are contorted into an ugly grimace. There is rage and bitterness and decades’ old grief in his eyes. But there is no surprise.

“You knew,” Sharon says to him.

 _That_ makes Tony turn to her. Whatever it is her adopted brother sees on her face makes his eyes widen and his jaw slacken. Then he spins to face Steve.

“You didn’t _tell her_?” Tony demands.

For a long tense moment, his words don’t make sense. Then their meaning sinks into Sharon’s brain, and she _moves_.

When she comes back to herself, there is the muzzle of her pistol pressed against Steve’s forehead, digging in with enough force that the sharp edges must be leaving marks against his skin. The safety is off. Her heart is pounding and there’s a dull roaring in her ears. Her entire body is trembling. But the hand holding the gun is as steady as a rock, her finger brushing feather-light over the trigger.

“Sharon-” Steve begins to say.

“How long?” Sharon hisses out through clenched teeth.

She sees their images superimposed over the back of her eyelids every time she blinks. Aunt Peggy. And her parents. _Her parents._

“Don’t bullshit me right now, Rogers,” Sharon snarls. “ _How long?_ ”

“…since Insight,” Steve finally answers. He has the grace to look shamefaced.

“Share-Bear,” Tony says. He touches her wrist, fingers ghosting over her pulse, which beats hummingbird fast. “Sharon, put the gun down.”

“This is what you two argued about.” Sharon’s vision blurs until Steve is nothing but a haze of blue. Her mind feels crystal clear, and she looks back on the past few months in a new light. “This is why you were so angry at him.”

“Share-Bear,” Tony says again. “Put the gun down, please.”

“Our parents, Tony. _Our parents._ ” Sharon looks at Steve now and she _hates._ Hates him more than she’s ever hated anyone in her entire life. “And _you_. You had _no right-_ ”

“He didn’t,” Tony agrees. “I understand. I really do. But, Sharon, you’re angry, and you’re not thinking straight, and you’ll regret this. Put the gun down.”

Steve does nothing, says nothing, just waits in silence for Tony to talk Sharon down. Super-soldier serum can’t do anything for a bullet in the brain, Sharon thinks. Tony presses down on her wrist, and Sharon resists for a long, drawn-out moment.

Then the moment passes and her hand sinks back down to her side. Tony doesn’t relax until Sharon re-holsters her pistol. What little of Steve’s face that she can see from behind his cowl is unreadable.

“Sharon-” Steve starts to say.

“Do _not_ talk to her,” Tony snaps at him.

“Tony, I-”

“I will deal with you later,” Tony says.

Sharon realizes her cheeks are wet and turns her face away from Steve’s entreating gaze. She physically can’t stomach the sight of him. She wants to take Tony and leave this wretched bunker. They have what they came for. They can arrest the man who masterminded the attack on the UN and bring proof of Tony’s innocence. The only loose string is –

“Barnes,” Sharon says. “Where is he?”

The Sokovian man chuckles. “ _Do you seek vengeance after all, Miss Carter?_ ”

“No,” Sharon says. “No more mind games. No more riddles. No more traps. This is the end of the line for you. You wanted to see us rip each other apart? Well, you failed. All that planning. All those deaths. All that waiting. All of it was for _nothing_. HYDRA tried to kill us, and they failed. Tony and I are still here, and HYDRA is dust in the wind. Tell me who you think came out as the winner.”

“ _HYDRA deserves its place on the ash heap,_ ” the man sneers. “ _Their destruction does not bother me. But you and Stark have grown to be ten times as dangerous as your predecessors.”_

“You’re saying they should have killed us when they had the chance,” Tony says flatly. “Finally, something we can agree with.”

“I won’t. Ask. Again,” Sharon says through gritted teeth. “Where is Barnes?”

“ _Funny you should ask that, Miss Carter, considering where we are. In 1991 when Howard Stark managed to recreate the super-soldier serum and our good friend Sergeant Barnes was sent to retrieve them-_ ” Sharon’s jaw clenches. “ _-this was where he returned to. This was where HYDRA made their own super-soldiers, where they were trained, where they were stored. In a way, you could even say that Howard Stark made all of this possible._ ”

Tony starts forward, but Sharon throws an arm out and catches him around the torso.

“Don’t,” Sharon warns lowly. “He wants us to react.”

“ _It makes all this especially ironic, I think. Fitting, even, for this to be the place where it all ends. Full circle._ ” The man’s eyes settle on something behind Sharon, glinting dully with satisfaction. “Ты не согласен, солдат?”

Steve gets it first.

He’s shielding Sharon with his shield just as the gunshots ring out. Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon sees Tony diving for cover. Then Steve is up and moving, engaging a woman with a blonde braid and a body as buff as a bodybuilder. She tilts her head smoothly to the left, dodging his blow by millimeters. Then she slams the sharp edge of her elbow into his sternum, sending him stumbling back slightly.

She’s faster than Steve and almost as strong. One of HYDRA’s super-soldiers.

A second silhouette emerges from the corridor. Sharon starts to move forward, but when she gets a good look at their face, she freezes like a Medusa victim.

It’s _him_.

He looks exactly the same as he did on the video, so much so that it can’t be anything but a deliberate choice. The same hair, dark and lanky, hanging around his face like a curtain. The gleaming arm. All in black. Face uncovered. The sight of him is a shock to the system.

“Sharon!” Tony yells, and it snaps her out of her paralysis.

Sharon attacks, but it’s like fighting against a thousand-year-old tree. Nothing makes him go down. Nothing even seems to faze him. The Winter Soldier blocks her kicks and makes a grab for her. Sharon barely ducks under it, feeling the rush of air parting her hair as she does so. She spins as she pops back up and roundhouse kicks him in the face. His head snaps back, and Sharon uses the momentum to drive her knee into his temple.

He anticipates her move and grabs her leg, trapping her foot in his armpit with her thigh hooked over his shoulder. Then he grabs her other leg and physically _hurls_ her over his shoulder. Sharon slams _hard_ into the ground, hip first, and lies there, all the breath knocked out of her lungs.

“Hey, you moron!” Tony shouts.

 _I sure hope he’s not talking about me_ , Sharon thinks dazedly.

Tony’s got his repulsor glove out and he does… something to it. Something that makes it emit a sound like a tuning fork. Sharon’s ears pop, but its effect on the others is much more stirring.

All three super-soldiers drop, clutching their ears. But Barnes isn’t completely incapacitated. He’s already struggling to his feet, his entire face screwed up as he reaches for his gun. Tony rushes forward and they grapple over the gun, which just about shaves ten years off Sharon’s life. At one point, Barnes manages to point the gun at the other man’s forehead and pulls the trigger, making Sharon’s heart stop.

There’s a small puff of gunpowder as Tony gets his repulsor glove over the muzzle of the gun just in time, stopping the bullet in its barrel. In a movement too fast for Sharon to keep track of, Tony detaches the slide of the gun and whips it across Barnes’s face with enough force to snap his head to the side.

Barnes elbows Tony in the face and sinks his fist into the older man’s abdomen. Tony crumples. Sharon sees that Steve wants to intervene, but he has his hands full with the other HYDRA assassin. She struggles to her feet and raises her pistol, aiming for the back of the head.

Barnes must hear her moving before he whirls around and grips her wrist, shoving it to the side. The gun goes off and the bullet misses his head. Then he twists her arm so hard that she’s forced to drop her pistol. He drives his knee hard into the small of her back, making her cry out and go boneless with temporary sensory numbness, then he maneuvers himself so his front is pressed to her back, wraps his arms around her neck, and squeezes.

Black spots dance in her vision. Gagging for air. One hand scrambling for purchase at the arms around her neck, the other hand reaching for her Glock.

Barnes kicks her in the back of the knee and she goes down to her knees. Her hand slides down a few more inches and her fingers wrap around the handle of her Glock. Barnes’s head is above her, his breath against her hair, slightly to the left. She raises her gun over her left shoulder and fires.

Barnes twists, avoiding the bullet. Keeping one hand wrapped around her neck, he forces her wrist back down until the gun is at level with her abdomen. Sharon’s left ear is ringing painfully. As best as she can with one hand, she turns the Glock so the muzzle is pressing against the skin of her abdomen, a little to the left of her belly button. With surgical precision, she carefully tilts it to just the _right_ angle.

Through and through. No bone, nerve, or major vessel involvement. _Hopefully_ no organ trauma. Just uncomplicated soft-tissue damage.

Sharon presses down on the trigger and the gun goes off. Barnes releases her and staggers back. The pain in her abdomen is secondary to the relief of being able to take a full breath. She staggers to her feet and turns her Glock on Barnes.

“Sharon, no!” Steve cries.

Sharon hesitates, but Tony takes the decision out of her hands.

The repulsor blast is blinding. And Barnes falls to his knees. His metal arm has been blasted completely off, only the upper part emblazoned with the red star still attached to his shoulder. The metal and disconnected wires glow red with heat.

It takes a moment for Sharon to realize that the smell of burning flesh is coming, not from Barnes, but from Tony, who’s pulling off his repulsor glove and nursing his blistered fingers.

Then Steve is there, shoving Sharon towards the exit. “You both have to leave. He’s not going to stop. He _can’t_. Go. Go!”

“The jet,” Sharon says.

She slings Tony’s arm over her shoulder and helps him move quicker. A fantastically livid black eye is already starting to bloom on his face, swollen and purple. He’s slightly hunched over, arms around his middle where Barnes hit him. Sharon worries about internal bleeding. Despite her help, Tony seems incapable of moving at anything other than a swift limp.

A miracle of miracles, they make it out of the bunker without anyone pursuing them. It’s snowing heavily, and Sharon’s cheeks – wet with sweat and tears – are numb with cold. She looks down and realizes she’s left a trail of blood in the snow.

“Jesus,” Tony says, having just noticed the same thing.

“It looks worse than it actually is,” Sharon assures him.

“It looks pretty bad,” Tony observes. “God, I can’t believe you _shot_ yourself.”

“It’s fine,” Sharon says repressively. Talking about the injury only serves to make the pain worse. “It’s just uncomplicated soft-tissue damage. Through and through. The bullet missed any bones, nerves, and major blood vessels. I’m mostly certain it missed my intestines as well.”

“ _Mostly_ certain? How certain is mostly certain?”

“Ninety-nine percent sure.”

“Ninety-nine percent? That’s quite high. Are you sure that’s the figure you’re sticking with?”

Sharon thinks about that for a moment, then finally settles on: “Seventy-five, then. Happy?”

“Not really,” Tony complains. “That percentage jumped quite a bit. You just lost twenty-four percent.”

“Can we just stop talking and get to the jet before I bleed to my death?” Sharon says in exasperation.

“You just _said_ the bullet didn’t hit any major blood vessels,” Tony reminds her.

“It did. I know what I’m talking about, Tony. I’ve had practice.”

“Practice on _who_?” Tony demands.

They reach the Wakandan fighter jet and Tony makes a beeline for the controls. Sharon tears strips from the bottom of her bloody shirt, gets ice from outside and jury-rigs a makeshift pressure dressing around her waist.

Sharon lets out a blissful sigh of relief as the cold of the ice numbers her flesh. She takes stock of the rest of her injuries. Her hip is slightly swollen and throbs with pain, but the bone isn’t broken. At worst, she’s suffered some hairline fractures. Her left ear, which was in close proximity to her gun when it went off, is still partially deaf.

“We need backup,” Sharon says. “Can you contact the Avengers? We could do with some heavy hitters right about now.”

“No signal.” Tony slams a palm against the control panel. “So much for that superior Wakandan technology.” His fingers fly over the dashboard and the aircraft starts to rise. “I’ll try the coms again once we’re a few miles out.”

“Are we going to just leave Steve to deal with two murderous HYDRA super-assassins?” Sharon asks incredulously.

“One of those HYDRA super-assassins was trying to murder _us_ ,” Tony points out.

There’s a loud _BANG_ and the jet tilts alarmingly.

“Oho,” Tony groans. “Speaketh of the Winter Soldier, and he doth appear to kill us.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Sharon informs him.

“You sure?”

“Not very,” Sharon admits, biting her lip.

Another alarming tilt of the jet, followed by them plummeting a hundred feet in the air. Tony manages to stabilize them just as there is banging on the aircraft doors from the outside, hard enough that the metal starts denting. Then they plummet another hundred feet. It’s like they’re falling down the world’s largest staircase, one hundred-foot step at a time.

_BANG-BANG!_

“Who’s there?” Tony calls back.

“Time and place,” Sharon reminds him.

“Sorry, can’t hear you,” Tony says. “Too busy crashing!”

“We have to jump out!”

“If we do that, we’ll be pancakes!”

“If we stay here, we’ll be crushed!”

The jet tilts forward in an uncontrollable nosedive. Tony curses as he nearly faceplants. Sharon grabs him and drags him to the doors, slamming her palm on the emergency button.

“On my signal,” Sharon yells, as the doors slide open and the frigid Siberian wind whips her hair all over her face.

“No! On _my_ signal!” Tony disagrees.

“What?”

“Projectile motion! Force times trajectory angle-”

“Fine!” Sharon concedes. “On your signal!”

They jump on his say-so. The force of the crash propels them several feet into the air. For a moment, Sharon feels weightless, the glacial air rubbing her cheeks raw, a blanket of pure white as far as the eye can see.

Then gravity takes hold and she starts to fall.

She keeps her elbows and knees bent, tucks her chin to her chest, and turns her head to the side to protect her head. The snow already cushions her impact, and she uses the momentum to tuck herself in a roll when she hits the ground. She comes up lying on her back, breathless and cold and sore, but without so much as a broken bone or a pulled muscle. Every nerve in her body is tingling with adrenaline.

 _Tony_ , she reminds herself.

He doesn’t seem to have fared as well as Sharon in the fall. He’s stumbling in the snow, doubled-up in pain. He might’ve broken a rib. He’s definitely hurt his leg (the one in the leg brace), judging by the way he’s dragging it behind him. Behind him stalks the Winter Soldier. Neither men seem to see her through the dense snowstorm.

The Winter Soldier raises a gun and fires. Tony falls. The snow is stained pink with blood. But he’s still moving, clutching his shoulder and struggling to get away. Not dead. Not yet.

 _Not him_ , Sharon thinks. _Not him._

…

_When she’s twelve years old, Happy Hogan brings her trap-shooting._

_“You’re a natural!” Happy compliments her._

_Sharon doesn’t understand why the clay pigeons are called clay pigeons when they don’t look like birds at all. But she **loves** trap shooting. She likes the feel of sunshine on her face and a shotgun in her hands, likes the noise and the recoil of the weapon. She likes how, for her really good shots, the clay pigeons shatter into pieces so tiny they look like powder._

_The trap machine launches another clay disc into the air. Sharon breathes out, takes aim, and fires._

_She doesn’t miss._

_…_

She doesn’t miss.

Barnes slumps almost gracefully to his knees, then to his side. He never even saw it coming. Blood runs down his face. His forehead is as holey as an unfinished poke cake.

Sharon suppresses a hysterical giggle and scrambles to her feet. Her limbs don’t seem to want to cooperate with her brain. Everything seems very remote and unreal. Her Glock hangs almost awkwardly from her fingers, which she can’t seem to unclench from the grip.

Tony is struggling to sit up, eyes wide with shock and fixed on Barnes’s body. His lips are tinged blue and he’s shivering violently, teeth chattering audibly from either fear or cold. He’s suffering heavy blood loss. Potentially hypothermia as well.

Sharon collapses to her knees next to him, pressing hard against the gunshot wound in Tony’s shoulder. He groans in pain, and even that is music to her ears as she drinks in the fact that he’s alive to be in pain. Sharon’s hands are slick with his blood. Even through his clothes, she can feel how freezing his skin is. Hot tears spill from her eyes, thawing the layer of frost that seemed to have formed over her cheeks. She’s breathing in and out very rapidly.

“You’re okay,” Sharon keeps saying, over and over again. “We’re okay. We’re alive.”

Tony squeezes her hand mutely. “You’re hyperventilating,” he tells her.

There is _him._

There is a man who has had his agency forcibly taken from him for seventy years, tortured and brainwashed beyond Sharon’s comprehension. There is the assassin who stole Sharon’s parents from her before she could even remember them. There is the killer who would have murdered Tony in front of her very eyes. There is Steve Rogers’s best friend. And he is dead by her hand.

There is a man who will never hurt Sharon or anyone she loves ever again.

The best friend of the man Sharon loves is dead because she killed him. And the only thing that matters to her at that moment is that her brother is _alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> (In my best Bellatrix Black impression):
> 
> "I KILLED BUCKY BARNES!"
> 
> Be honest though, how many of you saw this coming?
> 
> The next chapter will definitely not be as long, maybe 2000 words, and will mostly deal with the fallout and epilogue. You'll find out what happens with Sharon and Steve. It's pretty much the only chapter in which their relationship comes into play.
> 
> I kinda want to smack myself there. Because honestly, if I hadn't tagged their relationship, you all would have no idea Sharon and Steve were together. *smacks forehead*
> 
> Kudos and comments are welcome! Lemme know what you guys think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! *blows trumpets in celebration*
> 
> Thank you to everyone who subscribed and kudos and commented. I really appreciate you guys.
> 
> Now onwards!

_Sharon never knew Obadiah Stane very well. He’s just Tony’s business partner and unofficial godfather, existing in the periphery of her life. She never paid him much mind, before. At worst, he’s a neutral non-participant in her upbringing. His worst offense is being a bit of a chauvinist._

_Her earliest memory of Stane is when she’s in kindergarten, when they just moved to the Malibu Mansion. Stacks of paperwork are piled all over the coffee table. Some sort of travel program is on TV. Tony and Stane are drinking Macallan neat, while Sharon gets a plastic flute filled with orange juice and a toy abacus to play with._

_“I know hands-on parenting works for some people,” Stane is saying. “But those people weren’t the beneficiaries of a multinational company in their early twenties, Tony. No, don’t look at me like that. I’m not saying dump her at boarding school. Not now at least. Hire a nanny. You can start thinking about boarding school when she’s older-”_

_“Fourteen isn’t that much older, Obie.”_

_“Fourteen was old enough for Howard.”_

_“Ah. Yes. Howard. The Father of the Year.”_

_“You turned out all right, didn’t you?”_

_Tony scoffs._

_Sharon is their main source of contention. Obadiah accuses Tony of spoiling her and letting her run wild, coloring and drawing, and generally making messes all over walls and floors. He’s unhappy with the way Tony prioritizes Sharon over SI business – being late to a board meeting because he stayed up late with her making blanket and pillow forts the day before; bringing her to parks and beaches and not rushing back to work just because it made her happy to stay out longer._

_Sharon never thinks much about it. Obadiah is Obadiah. Vaguely unpleasant to be around and generally always unhappy that Tony doesn’t spend every waking moment working._

…

_A middle-aged, slightly overweight man with a shiny bald head is slumped in an uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chair. He’s unconscious, wrists and ankles shackled to the chair with handcuffs. He’s still in the same suit and tie he wore to this morning Stark Industries’ board meeting, conservative cut, slightly rumpled._

_As the opioid wears off, he starts to stir. There is the sound of metal clinking as he pulls at his restraints._

_“Sharon?” Obadiah Stane says. “W-where am I?” He’s punch-drunk, mouth open and lolling, his words coming out garbled._

_A blonde woman stands at the edge of the circle of light. Her face is unassuming, sweet and pretty, but not striking. She’s dressed in a form-hugging catsuit, a gun holstered at her thigh. She’s leaning against the wall, hip cocked, watching with hard eyes as he blinks woozily against the deliberately disorienting and harsh light suspended above his chair._

_“Did you-?” More awake now, Stane starts struggling in earnest. “Did you drug me? Sharon, what the hell?”_

_Sharon’s voice is low and deadly. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”_

_A look of fleeting panic flits across his face before Stane arranges his expression into one of wounded bewilderment. “Find out about what?” He starts to shake his head and adopts an unctuous tone. “Sharon, look, whatever this is, I think it’s gone on far enough. Why don’t you get me out of this chair, and then we can talk about this, okay?”_

_He gives her a carefully crafted look of paternal concern. It’s the exact same look he used to direct at Tony, and seeing it again, here and now, knowing what she knows, makes Sharon’s blood boil._

_Stane goes on ingratiatingly: “I mean, I understand how hard it’s been for you, with Tony missing and – god forbid – expired. But I’m going through the same things you are-”_

_“Are you?” Sharon interrupts him sharply. “Are you really? Of everyone who knew Tony, you’re the one who stands to benefit the most from his death. You’ve all but taken over SI as CEO. You’ve filled the vacuum Tony left quite neatly. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’d rather he stayed gone. No more looking over your shoulder every time you take your kickbacks – free reign at last.”_

_“Sharon, that- that’s crazy. Do you think this is about the company? You think I’m selling to terrorists?” Stane’s bald head is glistening with sweat. “I would never do that to Tony. He’s like a son to me. He means as much to me as you mean to him.”_

_“Do not ever,” Sharon says, “ever make that comparison again.” She allows a smug smile to curve her mouth. “And you were the one who mentioned terrorists, not me.”_

_“Let me out of this!” Stane shouts, struggling anew. “Let me out! You cannot just lock me in this- this torture chamber! I did nothing wrong! I have rights! This is illegal!”_

_“So is double-dealing under the table,” Sharon counters with an easy smile and a nonchalant shrug. “Never stopped you before.”_

_“You can’t do this to me!”_

_“You are guilty of premeditated murder and who knows how many counts of terrorist act offenses. And I am a SHIELD agent.” Sharon narrows her blue eyes dangerously. “I can do whatever I want to you.”_

_“You don’t have proof.”_

_“ **You did not tell us that the target you paid us to kill was the great Tony Stark** ,” Sharon recites, in perfect Arabic. She pauses and switches back to English, tone mocking: “As you can see, Obadiah Stane, your deception and lies will cost you dearly.”_

_Stane’s complexion pales to the color of expired milk._

_“So, this is how it’s going to work,” Sharon says. “You will tell me where the Ten Rings are keeping my brother… or I will break every single bone in your body.” She smiles. “Alphabetically.”_

_“I don’t know where they’re keeping Tony!” Stane protests desperately._

_“You know more than what you’re telling me.”_

_“Not where their headquarters are!”_

_“Then I’m going to **motivate** you,” Sharon says pleasantly. “Let me start by giving you a refresher on anatomy. First up, we have the calcaneus. In layman's terms, it’s called the heel bone. So… which one would you rather I break first. The left one? Or the right? Or would you rather it be dealer’s choice?”_

_“Sharon,” Stane leans forward, adopting a sycophantic tone. “Sharon, you’ve known me your entire life. I’ve known you since you were a little girl.”_

_“You’ve known Tony even longer than that,” Sharon says coolly. “Look what you did to him.”_

_“You’re doing this all for him, aren’t you?” Stane leans even closer, obsequiously. “For Tony. I can’t blame you for it. He was all you had for so long. He was the closest thing you had to a father. But Tony wouldn’t want you to do this. He wouldn’t want you to hurt me, to make me suffer. He would want you to be better than this, Sharon. And you, you want to make him proud, don’t you?” Sharon falters, and Stane presses forward, a viper sending weakness. “Would he be proud of you if he could see you now, Sharon?”_

_Sharon studies him. A touch of triumph creeps into Stane’s eyes and he’s already starting to smile complacently. He’s so certain in his persuasiveness, of his ability to talk himself out of any situation, to cut a winning deal._

_Not this time, she thinks._

_“You’re right,” Sharon allows. “Tony **is** the closest thing to a father I have. And he **would** want me to be better than this. But do know what else he is, Obie?” She bends down and smiles wider, all teeth, and no mirth. “He is **not here**.” Stane’s face falls. “Now Obie… left or right?”_

…

Tony finds her on the balcony. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.

Sharon hums noncommittedly. She shifts aside to make space for him and pats the floor next to her. She’s sitting cross-legged, a thermos cradled between her fingers and a blanket thrown over her shoulders to combat the lingering chilliness. Tony plops down next to her, pressing their shoulders together briefly.

“Hot chocolate?” Sharon offers him the half-drunk thermos. “Not really a Wakandan drink, you know but…”

“But chocolate is universal,” Tony says.

“Exactly.”

Tony peers at the appreciably dark circles visible underneath her eyes. “Nightmares?”

Sharon turns her face away, stares out across the city. “I like it here,” she says instead of answering. “It’s peaceful. Quiet.”

“Is that your really polite way of telling me to shut up?” Tony asks mildly.

“We could just stay here,” Sharon suggests jokingly. “No one would ever find us here. Grow old. Leave all our troubles behind.”

“T’Challa doesn’t feel _that_ guilty,” Tony deadpans.

Sharon laughs.

Wakanda really is a beautiful country, especially during sunrise. The city itself sits in a basin, ringed on all sides by green rolling hills and mountains. Shining towers and other architectural wonders spiral into the sky, gleaming gold in the orange light of the rising sun. A wide river ribbons through the settlement, making a lazy glittering _G_.

Every time Sharon blinks, she can still see Stane, like the image of him is painted on the back of her eyelids. She can still feel the crunch of his bones breaking beneath her hands, hear his screams and his begging to stop.

It’s been a long time since she’s had that particular nightmare.

It seemed necessary at the time. Stane had information he wasn’t willing to give up. Sharon needed that information to find her brother. A plus B equals C. A logical progression and natural escalation.

Stane was a threat to Tony. Ergo, Stane had to be eliminated. Cut and dry.

It all seemed so black and white to Sharon when Tony’s life was on the line.

With the sun up, the air starts to warm up, but the lingering chilliness from the night still makes Tony shiver slightly. Sharon adjusts the blanket so it’s wrapped around them both, and they pass the thermos back and forth, sitting in congenial silence. They are like two small plants growing in the same plot of soil, roots and branches contorting into gnarled and unlikely positions to make room for the other.

Tony chooses that moment to poke her forehead with his finger. “Daydreaming?”

Sharon swats at him. “I’m thinking.”

Tony’s lips quirk, then he asks, very abruptly, “Have you been to see him yet?”

“No,” Sharon says shortly.

Tony studies her. “Let me see if I’ve got this right so far: You’re angry at him for lying. You feel guilty for killing Barnes. But at the same time, you’re relieved and even sort of glad that he’s dead. And you’re more bothered that Steve blames you than the fact that Barnes is dead… am I right so far?”

Sometimes Sharon wishes Tony didn’t know her so well. “That thing you’re doing? We have a word for it. It’s called psychological projection.”

“And that thing that _you’re_ doing? It’s called avoidance.” Tony hugs her around the waist. “He gets zero points for implementation, but he tried to protect us, you know that.”

“Do I?” Sharon lets her head fall back, eyes stinging.

She’s turned this question over and over in her mind for days. Why did Steve tell Tony the truth, but not Sharon? Why lie to one and not the other? Because he trusted Tony more? No, that’s not quite right.

Steve’s priority would have been to protect Bucky.

(Steve’s priority was always Bucky.)

He would have looked at Tony (older, crippled, a civilian) and Sharon (an Avenger, a SHIELD agent, someone with the wherewithal to kill), and judged the latter to be a bigger threat.

Steve was protecting someone, all right, Sharon just isn’t sure he was protecting either of them.

“He covered up their deaths, Tony.” Sharon turns her head, hides her tears in his shoulder. “Howard and Peggy were his friends.”

She knows that Peggy was, in many ways, the originary of Steve’s affections for Sharon. She knows he wouldn’t have looked twice at Sharon if not for her connection to Peggy. And if he could do that to Peggy –

“What would Steve have done, if Barnes had killed us both in Siberia?” Sharon says.

“I don’t know,” Tony says quietly. “But he was trying to protect someone he loved. Is that so terrible, Sharon?”

…

Sterile white bandages have been wrapped around the upper portion of Barnes’s face, hiding his eyes and forehead. He’s still missing an arm. A synthetic cap covers the metal stump, hiding the disconnected wires and other couplings that would otherwise dangle in the air. It makes his body look lopsided.

Steve watches him through the glass of the cryopod. Golden hair and blue eyes, unsettlingly attractive despite the purple bruises marring his cheek and temple. His head is bent with the weight of his grief, and he looks like a piece of religious art.

A modern-day take on an Ancient Greek tragedy. Achilles and Patroclus.

He obviously hears Sharon approach but doesn’t acknowledge her.

“What will happen to him?” Sharon asks.

For a long, drawn-out moment of silence, she thinks he won’t answer her.

“Bucky would have wanted to be buried with his sister,” Steve’s voice is rough and low. He still won’t look at her. “But people like HYDRA will never stop trying to get their hands on him, even just his body, because of the super-serum.” He exhales raggedly. “So I decided – cremation.”

“Steve,” Sharon says, then stops when she realizes she doesn’t know what else to say. What else _can_ be said? She takes a step towards him. “Can I touch you?”

Steve turns his head, looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’d rather you not,” he says.

Sharon nods, stung but not surprised. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Faultlessly polite. Civil and detached and impersonal. He might as well be addressing a stranger. Sharon would prefer he scream at her. Be angry. Act resentful. Anything.

She bites her tongue and folds her arms over her chest. The AC chills her fingers and she tucks them between her armpits.

“What happens to us now?” Sharon asks. She’s unsure whether the ‘us’ refers to the team, or her and Steve.

Steve lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “You have what you came for, don’t you?” he says, lips barely moving. What little of his profile she can see appears as emotive as a statue. “Tony’s name is cleared. He’s no longer a wanted man. You can go home. You got what you wanted,” he finishes bitterly.

“I didn’t want this, Steve,” Sharon snaps. “I never wanted any of _this_.”

Finally, Steve’s stony exterior cracks, and some of the anger slips out. “Didn’t you?”

“Of course, I didn’t! Why the hell would you think I did?” Sharon demands.

“You killed him, Sharon!” Steve’s voice cracks with fury and despair.

“I was protecting Tony!”

“You didn’t have to go so far to do it! You were angry-”

“Of course, I was angry!” Sharon snarls, cutting him off midsentence. “I just saw your best friend murder my _parents_ , Steve! I just found out that you’d kept this secret from me for years! I was fucking furious at both of you!”

“Well, it sure as hell looked as if you were trying your hardest to kill Bucky in the bunker!”

“ _He_ was trying to kill _me_!”

“It wasn’t him, Sharon!”

Sharon scoffs. “Oh, like that makes a damn bit of difference!”

“Of course, it makes a difference!”

“I was fighting for my _life_! In case it escaped your notice, I nearly died anyway! Multiple times!” Sharon yells at him. “Or do you think it would have ended any better if I’d just stood there and let him kill me?”

“Well, maybe it would have!”

Sharon’s eyes widen.

All the blood drains from Steve’s face. “I didn’t mean that,” he says.

Sharon is too angry to feel hurt. That will probably come later. “You said it though,” she points out. “You must have meant it, at least a little bit.”

Steve presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Bucky didn’t deserve this.” His voice trembles. He looks like a man falling apart. “He didn’t deserve any of this. It’s not fair.” He sounds like a child.

 _Life isn’t fair_ , Sharon thinks.

“It should have been me,” Steve says. He lowers his hands, revealing red-rimmed eyes.

Sharon stares back at him. She feels her heart splinter as she asks the question she already knows the answer to, “Do you think we’ll ever be able to move past this?”

Steve’s blue eyes trace her face searchingly, then he looks away, seemingly unable to bear the sight of her any longer. “No,” he says.

Sharon nods in acceptance. She knows that the resentment and bitterness over Bucky will always burn hotter than whatever love Steve still feels for her.

“You’re not planning on coming back to the Avengers,” Sharon says. It’s more of a statement than a question. When Steve doesn’t deny it, she goes on, “You know this is what Zemo planned for, right? You’re giving him what he wants. You’re letting him win.”

“Then he wins,” Steve says simply. Dark shadows encircle his eyes. It takes a moment for her to place the expression on his face, one she’s never seen him wear before – Defeat.

“He doesn’t have to,” Sharon says. She tilts her head back, blinks back tears. “I didn’t ever think it would end this way,” she confesses.

“Did you expect me to forgive you for Bucky?” Steve asks. It’s unexpectedly cruel.

“Did you expect me to let him kill Tony?” Sharon counters.

“And you don’t regret it?”

“Regret doing everything to keep my brother alive?” Sharon shakes her head, a mirthless smile playing on her lips as she steps away from him. “Goodbye, Steve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. That's the ending.
> 
> Normally, I'm a big fan of happy endings. But I just really couldn't see a viable way for Steve and Sharon to forgive each other. I like a bit of realism in my relationships.
> 
> Love has its limits. So does forgiveness. Steve and Sharon both drew their lines in the sand (Bucky and Tony), and once that line was crossed, there was no going back.
> 
> Feel free to drop something in the comments! And don't forget to kudos if you enjoyed this! <33333
> 
> And if anyone is interested, I have another fic in the works:
> 
> You guys remember at the end of Iron Man 1, there's a scene where Tony walks into his living room to find Nick Fury waiting for him in the dark?
> 
> Well, what if, instead of Nick Fury, Tony's first contact with SHIELD was with Alexander Pierce.
> 
> Yes, THAT Alexander Pierce.
> 
> The Head of HYDRA.
> 
> FYI, it's an eventual Tony/Natasha fic. And I'll probably start posting sometime in 2021.
> 
> CU! <3


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